(en) Britain, AFED Organise! #81 - Culture Article: Henri Edmond Cross: Painter of Utopia

?Of all of Seurat?s disciples, he was the one with the liveliest imagination, the deepest 
feeling and the most accomplished spirit.? - Emile Verhaeren ---- Organise! has featured a 
series of articles on artists who identified strongly with the anarchist movement. There 
have been articles in its pages on Pissarro, Signac, Luce, Steinlen, and Delannoy. This 
time we look at the work of the French painter Henri Edmond Cross. ---- Henri Edmond 
Delacroix was born at Douai in northern France on May 20th 1856, into a well off family of 
shopkeepers. A cousin, who was a doctor, noticed his interest in painting and helped him, 
even paying for his first drawing lessons. He went on to attend art school in Lille. ---- 
At first he painted in a realist style. Not wanting to be mistaken for the famous painter 
Delacroix, and with his English mother in mind, he changed his name to Cross, the English 
translation of the ?croix? component of his surname.

In 1883 he took a trip to the south
eastern corner of France and painted
many landscapes. It was on this trip
that he met the painter Paul Signac,
who became his friend and was later
to have a deep influence on him,
both artistically and politically.

In the following year he co-
founded the Soci?t? des Artistes
Ind?pendants (Society of Independ-
ent Artists), which revolted against
the hidebound traditionalism of
the official Salon and organised its
own exhibitions. There he met many
members of the Neo-Impressionists,
like Georges Seurat and Charles
Angrand. However he continued to
paint in a style influenced by Manet.
Gradually, his colours became lighter
and brighter, inspired as he was by
the sunny landscapes of southern
France, where he wintered
every year because of his
chronic rheumatism. By the
late 1880s he was painting
landscapes influenced by
Monet and Pissarro.

He moved full-time to
southern France in 1891
because of his illness and
began to paint in a neo-
Impressionist style. Here he
was visited by the art critic
F?lix F?n?on, and by the
painters Th?o Van Rys-
selberghe and Paul Signac
among others. It was sig-
nificant that all three were
very much identified with
the anarchist movement in
France. His first painting in
this style was a portrait of
his future wife, executed in
the divisionist style, where
colours are separated into
dots and brush strokes.

F?n?on had became direc-
tor of an art gallery, and
he helped his friend and
comrade by organising ex-
hibitions and publishing his
sketch books after his death.

Like the other artists that Cross
exhibited with - Luce, Petitjean, La
Rochefoucauld, Van Rysselberghe,
Signac, Angrand, Seurat and the two
sons of Pissarro, - he had become an
anarchist and subscribed to the ideas
of the anarchist theorist Kropotkin.
They believed that science and tech-
nology would help liberate humanity
both materially and spiritually. He
painted landscapes where human
figures blend with nature in har-
mony. He evoked a future anarchist
utopia in these paintings. As he said:
?I want to paint happiness; happy
beings that men (sic) will become in
a few centuries when pure anarchy
will have been realised?. Signac had
already painted a vast canvas depict-
ing this future society first entitled
Au Temps d?Anarchie (In The Time
of Anarchy) and then Au temps
D?Harmonie ( In the Time of Har-
mony). Carefree work for the good
of the community, free love, and the
joys of doing nothing are depicted.
Cross undertook a similar painting
with his L?Air du Soir (The Evening
Air) in 1894.

Like the other painters mentioned
above, Cross contributed to the
anarchist movement by donating
illustrations to the anarchist paper,
Les Temps Nouveaux (New Times),
edited by Jean Grave. He provided
the cover illustration for the pam-
phletm, ? Mon Fr?re le Paysan (To
My Brother The Peasant), written
by the anarchist theorist and activist
?lis?e Reclus in 1899. The following
year he did the same for Jean Grave?s
booklet, Enseignement Bourgeois et
Enseignement Libertaire ( Bourgeois
Education and Libertarian Educa-
tion). He provided an illustration for
the book of lithographs published by
Les temps Nouveaux in 1905 and a
drawing for the book, Patriotisme,
Colonisation.

However, he was conflicted by the
need to provide propagandist illus-
trations and his reservations about
compromising his artistic ideas, feel-
ing constrained by the nature of the
pieces he offered. This did not stop
him on several occasions donating
his works as prizes in fund raising
lotteries for Les Temps Nouveaux.

Cross?s health was worsening, with
increasingly poor eyesight and pain-
ful arthritis, and he died on the 16th
May 1910 of cancer at the age of fifty
four. His fellow anarchist painter Van
Rysselberghe provided a medallion
for his tomb.

Signac saw him as an ?impassive and
consistent thinker, who is simulta-
neously a passionate and strange
dreamer?. Cross, despite his painful
illnesses, had revelled in the joy of
painting and appreciation of great art
works. His sensuous painting exerted
an influence on a new generation
of painters like Kandinsky, Derain
and Matisse. Unlike Signac, whose
children promoted and preserved
his works, Cross had no such help
and after his death his paintings were
scattered.