Pansies and Pitcher

Bernice Cross’s well-known and admired still lifes are more symbolic than factual. Cross consistently used certain favored objects in situations where congruency is less important than the identity of each separate part. Each detail is realized in isolation and then united into a whole made mysterious by the inexplicable union of objects. This mysterious quality permeated Cross’s work throughout her entire career. Such effects could potentially destroy the harmony of a picture, yet her execution is so subtle that the oddity of her vision is absorbed in the imaginative totality of her work.

Pansies and Pitcher shows a typically scattered arrangement of objects on a table within a space curiously cut off from the painting’s rectangular format by sharp triangles at three corners. The effect dramatizes the presentation rather like a stage setting in which the curtain has just opened. A directional tension is felt between the vase, which rests near the bottom edge of the table and the white pitcher in the upper right. The salt shaker, lemon, and key create a sagging horizontal. Through these simple compositional decisions, Cross produced a sense of order that is emotional rather than intellectual and that pays little heed to the rules of architectonic order. Critics have often spoken of the whimsy and humor of her painting, but its seriousness, both in conception and execution, encourages a deeper reading.