The Pink Cloud (c. 1896): Art, History and Details

The Pink Cloud (c. 1896) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Henri-Edmond Cross (French, 1856–1910).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Due to his diagnosis of persistent rheumatism, Henri-Edmond Cross left Paris in 1891 and settled in the seaside village of Saint-Clair on the Mediterranean coast where the climate was more temperate. He expressed his enthusiasm for the French Riveria to his mother, “In the distance, the blue silhouette of the Maures and the Estérel—I have enough here to keep me busy all of life—I have just discovered happiness.” Once he had settled in the south, Cross adopted the Neo-Impressionist technique of Pointillism—applying paint in small dots or dashes of complementary colors that mix in the beholder’s eye to create an intense sensation of color and light. Here, a spectacular cloud is illuminated by the sunset. A pair of cypress trees link the garden landscape below to the vivid sky above.

Object facts

• Title: The Pink Cloud
• Date: c. 1896
• Creator attribution: Henri-Edmond Cross (French, 1856–1910)
• Culture: France, 19th century
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on canvas
• Dimensions: Unframed: 54.6 x 61 cm (21 1/2 x 24 in.); Framed: 78.9 x 86 x 8.9 cm (31 1/16 x 33 7/8 x 3 1/2 in.)
• Collection: Mod Euro - Painting 1800-1960
• Department: Modern European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 2020.106

A detail from the museum

Drawn to the beauty of the landscape and the climate that improved his chronic rheumatism from its state in Paris, Cross moved to the south of France where he made a home with his wife, Irma Clare, in Saint-Clair, a small village near the coast.

Collection credit

Nancy F. and Joseph P. Keithley Collection Gift

Further reading listed by the museum

• Compin, Isabelle. H.E. Cross. Paris, France: Quatre Chemins, 1964.
• Mettais, Valérie. Histoire vivante de l'impressionnisme. Paris : Hazan, 2021.
• Robinson, William H. "Modern European Painting." In The Keithley Collection at the Cleveland Museum of Art, edited by Heather Lemonedes Brown, 132-139, 142-149. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 2022.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.