Painted in 1906-07, Avant l’orage (La Barque) is a masterful evocation of the Mediterranean that beautifully illustrates Cross’s exploration of light and color. The present work, which depicts the unsettled sea of an oncoming storm, is a careful modulation of cool and warm tones. At the upper right of the picture, where the winds of the storm are blowing in from, paler tones dominate while along the shoreline at lower left brighter tones in more directionally varied brushstrokes appear to still cling to the last remnants of sunlight. On the shore of the beach a fisherman pulls in a small boat—the final act of a mariner before a deluge.

In 1891 Cross and his wife settled on the Côte d'Azur in the small village of Cabasson, situated between the sea and Mediterranean pines. The following year he was joined there by Paul Signac; both Cross and Signac would spend the majority of the remainder of their lives in this picturesque environment (see fig. 1). The vibrant, dazzling atmosphere of the coastal landscape became a major source of inspiration for Cross, which he expressed with an intense palette that prefigured the Fauve painters.

Carrie Haslet notes: “Cross, from about 1895 to 1903, painted scenes that were ever more idyllic, imaginative, and optimistic.... The mid-1890s brought changes in Cross's choice of subject, light and color, and technique. As Cross's biographer Isabelle Compin has noted, "Cross—now believing that the effects of light could not be rendered with accuracy in painting—chose instead to suggest light's intensity and to emphasize its ability to harmonize or unify differing compositional elements. His colors become more daring, heightened, unusual, and sumptuous" (Exh. Cat., Portland Museum of Art, Neo-Impressionism: Artists on the Edge, 2002, p. 28).

When he moved from Paris to the Midi, Cross was interested in exploring the nuances of light and color with a precision that the Impressionists had never achieved. In this picture, the modulation of color, the flatness of the forms, and the purity with which Cross applies each dab of paint all characterize the Neo-Impressionist style. Neo-Impressionism, a movement that evolved from the Impressionist’s emphasis on light and color, was rooted in the color theories of Eugène Michel Chevreul, a French chemist whose studies influenced the work of Cross and Georges Seurat. In the mid-1880s Seurat expounded upon Chevreul’s teachings in his writings and his numerous studies for Après-midi sur La Grande Jatte (see fig. 2). His developments in this area influenced artists, including Cross, Theo van Rysselberghe, and Paul Signac to adapt the pseudo-scientific principles into their own painting in the 1890s. While remaining very close to Seurat and Signac, Cross adapted the Divisionist style to his own more rhythmic and bold method. Instead of a rigid use of dots based on color theories, Cross employed a more liberated and intuitive style, creating a body of work that celebrates the majestic light of the Mediterranean coast. This development is evident in the present work in which Cross makes full use of the more expressive capacity afforded by his use of looser, more lively brushstrokes. At the same time, his exacting approach to color remained at the heart of his work.

In 1893 Cross and his wife moved into their newly constructed home in Saint-Clair, a hamlet near St. Tropez. The artist delighted in describing his new home to his friends and colleagues and over the years received many of them as visitors. “It consists of vines, rocks, and pine trees, beside the road and five minutes from the sea,” he wrote to Signac about the site of his new home, “You will see it next summer, my old friend” (quoted in Exh. Cat., Potsdam, Museum Barberini, Color and Light. The Neo-Impressionist Henri-Edmond Cross, 2018-19, p. 233). Years later he was still rhapsodic writing to the artist Charles Angrand: “The light which bathes all things in its radiance is enticing, dazzling, and overwhelming. Our beaches here are deserted. Elegance can be found only in the pines that rise out of the sand and in the delightful half-moon of the shoreline. But what never-ending beauty!” (ibid., p. 234).