CLAUDE MONET The Bodmer Oak, Fontainbleau Forest 1865 oil on canvas (Image: claudemonetgallery)
Autumn is a short but inspiring season for artists. Nature’s unique and vivid colouring at that time of year makes for bright fiery paintings whilst giving the artist a wide berth for interpretation and feeling.
Seasonal themed landscapes with localised colour changes were a staple of French Impressionist Claude Monet. Much of his earlier work featured woodland scenes. I really enjoy the works of this period because they are simple and honestly painted depictions, such as this resplendent painting The Bodmer Oak, Fointainebleau Forest, painted in 1865. The painting also highlights Monet’s incredible technical and observational skill, and was likely produced at the same time as his eventual abandoned piece Dejeuner Sur L’Herbe, a homage to Edouard Manet’s famous painting of a small social gathering in a heavily wooded forest.
DAVID HOCKNEY Autumn Leaves 2008 inkjet printed computer drawing (Image: Sotheby’s)
British artist David Hockney’s Autumn Leaves, produced from his prolific output with a computer tablet. With technology like this it is not too difficult to produce vibrant, glowing images, and Hockney’s colours display a citrusy freshness. His eye is a keenly observant one, and his simplistically rendered work reflects a sense of really being there, heightened by the overhanging branches in the foreground. Each leaf seems to take on a individuality of it’s own.
PAUL KLEE The Messenger of Autumn 1922 watercolour (Image: Daily Art Magazine)
German artist Paul Klee is famous for his ‘magic squares’. Much of his work contained organic and geometric forms to represent landscapes, accompanied by evocative titles, perhaps influenced by his musical family background. He also had a great passion for colour, assembling shades and tones in formal and innovative ways. The Messenger of Autumn is typical of watercolour images he created around 1922, where he often experimented with ‘false colour pairs’. The painting gives an impression of several viewpoints, with a clearing for a sunset coloured tree.
GUSTAV KLIMT Birch Forest 1903 oil on canvas (Image: Portland Art Museum)
Go back almost a century before Hockney and we are taken into another woodland scene during the beginning of autumn, this one by Austrian Gustav Klimt. Birch Forest has an enchanting but quiet stillness about it. Green and orange act as contrasting colours, whilst the tonality of each is similar enough to flatten the depth of the picture. Lack of shadows, coupled with straight vertical lines create a decorative patchwork quality, alongside pointillist mark making for the ground and and scratchy hatched lines of the birch tree bark.
Back Garden, Autumn 1995 acrylic 10 x 7 cm
My local woodland area in North London has been a place over the years to enjoy the peaceful serenity of trees and paint seasonal colour changes. Sometimes the view from a home window can bring inspiration to capture an enchanting scene. This small acrylic painting made in 1995 in Crouch End shows a large horse chestnut tree that was set in a cutting of aback garden. A branch beam sticks out at an angle that sets a tension amongst the other angles in the scene. The leaves of the tree were not particularly stunning but seemed to fit the the washed out sombre colouring of the entire painting, which was typical of my work at the time, largely due to the limited palette of colours that I frequently used.