The Wood

The Wood was painted in 1906, during Cross's late period when his divisionist technique was evolving toward the freer, more emotionally expressive colour application that would influence Matisse and the emerging Fauvist movement. By this date Cross had lived for many years near Saint-Tropez, and the wooded areas of the Var provided him with a subject that challenged his colour system in a different way from his coastal landscapes: dappled forest light, filtered through foliage, created an entirely different chromatic problem from the open brilliance of the Mediterranean shore. The Annonciade Museum in Saint-Tropez, which holds this work, is particularly significant as it sits in the very location where Cross, Signac, and their circle worked, and its collection of Post-Impressionist paintings documents the movement's southern French period with unique directness. The wood as a subject allowed Cross to explore the full chromatic range of greens, yellows, and filtered light effects that his mature technique was suited to expressing.

Cross uses an expanded range of greens — from cool blue-greens to warm yellow-greens — placed side by side in broad mosaic strokes to create the complex chromatic variation of filtered woodland light. The technique is freer than his earlier work, with larger, more gestural patches of colour that anticipate Fauve practice. Shadow areas glow with violet and blue.