This exceptionally finished drawing depicting a hydrangea is difficult to place either within Cross's small body of painted works or among his innumerable drawings and watercolors. The detailed naturalism and careful technique of the underdrawing suggest a date early in the artist's career, when he might still have been under the influence of the well-known Realist painter Jules Bastien-Lepage, who was one of his teachers. However, the stylized forms and vibrant colors that fill out the composition around the flower seem closer to Cross's later, more expressionist work, which has some effort on both the Fauvist and Cubist movements after the turn of the century. Whatever its date, this beautiful watercolor renders the hydrangea as study yet sensitive and fragile, setting off the simplified organic shades of green and blue, with simmering spots of bright orange. The drawing presents the artist's fundamental dilemma of trying to reach a balance between diligently recording nature and wholly reformulating it in his own terms.

from Spiro, Nineteenth-Century French Drawings (Notre Dame, 2007)