Henri-Edmond Cross (Henri-Edmond-Joseph Delacroix), French 1856-1910- Project de plat; brush and blue-grey wash, over an underdrawing in pencil, stamped with the atelier stamp H.E.C. signed and inscribed project de plat lower right; inscribed Ancienne collection Félix Fénéon lower left, 24.9 x 32.5 cm (unframed, mounted) (ARR) Provenance: The studio of the artist, Saint-Clair; possibly the Cross atelier sale, Paris, Hôtel Drouot (Baudoin), 28 October 1921; Félix Fénéon, Paris; probably the posthumous Fénéon sale ‘Henri-Edmond Cross. Ancienne collection Félix Fénéon’, Paris; Hôtel Drouot [Paul Renaud], 15 October 1980 Note: Born in Douai to an English mother and a French father, Henri-Edmond Delacroix studied first in Lille and later in Paris. Little is known of his work until 1884, when he first exhibited with the Société des Artistes Indépendants. Cross did not adopt the Neo-Impressionist techniques of his colleagues Georges Seurat and Paul Signac until the early 1890’s, after Seurat’s death, and from 1892 onwards Cross participated in all the exhibitions devoted to the Neo-Impressionist movement. The scholar and critic Félix Fénéon (1861-1944), a champion of the Neo-Impressionists, owned a large number of paintings and watercolours by Cross. In 1907 he organized a retrospective exhibition of Cross’s work at the Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, of which he was a director, and following the artist’s death three years later assisted Cross’s widow and Signac with making a proper inventory of the artist’s studio. Please refer to department for condition report