Garden at St. Tropez

Garden at St. Tropez from 1900 finds Cross in the Provençal fishing village that Signac had made into a gathering point for Neo-Impressionist painters. Cross had moved to the Mediterranean coast in 1891 and the exceptional quality of light there directly shaped his color theory: the intense sunshine demanded more saturated, more deeply contrasted color touches. The Milwaukee Art Museum holds this garden scene, painted during Cross's technical peak. Gardens, both enclosed and open, were a favored subject for their combination of structured space and unruly natural color.

Mediterranean sunlight is conveyed through closely packed touches of orange, yellow, and intense blue-violet in the shadows — a systematic use of simultaneous contrast that generates a sense of almost physical heat. Cross uses larger, more rectangular strokes than Seurat, giving the surface a deliberate, mosaic-like construction.