Étude pour Le Faune

Étude pour Le Faune (Study for the Faun), dated 1905 and held at the Museum of Grenoble, is a preparatory pastel study for a major mythological composition in which Cross explored the ancient figure of the faun — the half-human, half-goat woodland deity of Roman mythology — in the southern French landscape. By 1905 Cross was engaged with a series of mythological subjects that placed ancient figures in the contemporary Mediterranean landscape, situating his Divisionist color method within the long European tradition of pastoral and mythological painting. The pastel medium, unusual for Cross who worked primarily in oil, allowed a different exploration of color relationships than his oil technique. The faun subject connects Cross's art to the broader Symbolist-Post-Impressionist interest in pagan antiquity as a counternarrative to industrial modernity. The Grenoble museum holds several Cross works including the Antibes canvas and Dormeuse nue, constituting one of the most concentrated provincial French holdings of his art.

The pastel medium adapts Cross's color principles to a drawing context: strokes of pastel are applied in divided color fashion, building the figure and landscape through juxtaposed touches of chalk pigment rather than oil paint. The technique explores the same color relationships as his paintings through a different material.