La Chevelure

La Chevelure (The Hair), painted in 1892 and held at the Musée d'Orsay, is among Cross's earliest Divisionist figure studies, completed just after his adoption of the technique in 1891. The subject — a woman's hair, presumably being arranged or simply loose — is intimate and domestic, focusing Divisionist color analysis on the warm tones of human hair rather than on landscape or open-air light conditions. By 1892 Cross was working intensively to master the figure in Divisionist conditions, following Seurat's example in the Models series. The Orsay's acquisition positioned this early figure study alongside Cross's later and more ambitious canvases in the permanent collection. The hair subject offered a specific technical challenge: the varied warm tones of hair — from dark brown at the roots to lighter reddish-gold at the tips where light caught it — demanded careful calibration of divided color within a narrow tonal range. The domestic intimacy of the subject contrasts with the classical mythological figures and Mediterranean landscapes of his more celebrated works.

The hair is built from closely related warm strokes — browns, reds, golds, and yellows — differentiated by the direction and intensity of light falling on the mass of hair. The Divisionist stroke in this intimate study is smaller and more precise than in Cross's expansive Mediterranean landscapes.