Mediterranean Landscape with Pine; verso: Inscription

Inscriptions on the recto refer to the scene depicted, to contemporary politics, and to literature. The words "Libre expansion...etc." probably relate to the writings of the anarchist Jean Grave (1854-1939), whom Cross supported. The free development of the individual in society was one of Grave's concerns. A quote from the French-Swiss writer Madame de Staël's (Anne-Louise-Germaine Necker, Baroness de Staël-Holstein, 1766-1817) novel "Delphine" (1802) extends from recto to verso. For Napoleon this novel about the limits of women's freedom in an aristocratic society was controversial enough to exile the writer. Some of the inscriptions on the verso probably refer to the scene on the other side of the page (2 recto). At the bottom of the page Cross has written the title of the French edition of "Sartor Resartus: The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrocke" (1831) by the English writer Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881).