Like Paul Signac, Henri Edmond Cross encountered Neo-Impressionism through his involvement with the Société des Artistes Indépendants, which he helped to found in 1884. However, Cross’s "conversion" to the style was more gradual than Signac’s. He had established a name for himself at the Salon in the early 1880s, showing Realist portraits and still lifes; in subsequent years, he began to lighten his palette and paint en plein air, influenced by the work of Claude Monet and Camille Pissarro.

Cross—who anglicized his surname, Delacroix, to avoid association with the celebrated Romantic painter—adopted the Neo-Impressionist technique, with its dot brush strokes and decorative surfaces, in 1891. That same year, he moved to the south of France. There, along the Riviera, he completed Beach at Cabasson, selecting a palette of bleached browns, ivories, and blues in response to the bright Mediterranean light, and arranging the landscape’s features into regular, horizontal bands.

Cross’ affinity with Neo-Impressionism was not only stylistic but also political: he shared with Signac (who settled nearby in 1892) and Pissarro an anarchist vision of a classless, utopian society. Indeed, Beach at Cabasson seems to represent an idyllic realm: the dots of paint are impeccably aligned, the water is perfectly calm, sailboats float in an orderly row along the horizon, the branch at the upper right is unruffled by wind, the boys in the foreground are happy and warmed by the sun. Yet perhaps the three boys are a single boy, represented in successive postures. In this way, Cross introduced the element of time into the arcadian scene.