Autumn1877
A fashionably dressed young woman in a black jacket and round hat stands on a hillside carpeted with fallen leaves, lifting her ruffled skirt to reveal its sky-blue lining and holding a basket overflowing with orange foliage. More about this work
About this work
A fashionably dressed young woman in a black jacket and round hat stands on a hillside carpeted with fallen leaves, lifting her ruffled skirt to reveal its sky-blue lining and holding a basket overflowing with orange foliage. She looks straight out at us. Winslow Homer painted a number of such single figures of women in landscapes in the 1870s, pairing the seasons with contemporary fashion. The flickering touches of red, orange and green make the woods around her glow.
Written by Ochre Editions.
What you’re looking at
A woman with smooth, pale skin and wearing a hat, long dress, and gloves, stands holding a bunch of pumpkin-orange leaves against a background of trees painted with touches of rust orange and pine green in this vertical painting. The woman tips her head back slightly to look at us with dark eyes under arched eyebrows. Her cheeks are flushed and her coral-pink lips closed. Her round black hat perches on the back of her head and she has an inky black, long-sleeved, hip-length jacket with bronze trim at the shoulders, cuffs, and down the front. A gauzy bow is tied at her neck. Her left elbow, on our right, is bent and she holds up her tan-colored, ruffled skirt with a white-gloved hand. The raised skirt exposes sky-blue lining and white, ruffled flounces at her feet. Her right arm, on our left, hangs at her side and holds the handle of a basket. Deep marigold-orange leaves cascade out of the basket. One black shoe peeks out from under her long skirt. She stands on a hill carpeted with crimson-red, tawny-brown, golden yellow, and forest-green leaves. The space behind her is filled with touches and dabs of red, orange, brown, black, and tan.
Description from the National Gallery of Art.
How it was made
- Oil paint
- Pigment ground in a drying oil, usually linseed. It dries slowly, so painters could blend on the canvas, build up thin translucent glazes, and rework a picture over weeks. Canvas replaced wooden panels in the 1500s because it is lighter and can be rolled.
Winslow Homer
American, 1836–1910 · Born in Boston, Massachusetts; died in Prouts Neck, Maine.
Homer began as an illustrator, covering the Civil War for Harper’s Weekly, and first made his name in painting with scenes of soldiers and country life. A stay at the fishing village of Cullercoats on the English coast in 1881–82 turned him towards the sea, and from 1883 he lived at Prouts Neck, Maine, painting the Atlantic in all weathers. He was also a fluent watercolourist in the Adirondacks, Canada and the Caribbean, and The Gulf Stream draws on those southern journeys.
Written by Ochre Editions.
Rights and the museum’s record
Public domain. The National Gallery of Art has dedicated this image to the public domain under CC0, so anyone may copy, adapt and use it, for any purpose, without asking. Our prints and files are reproductions made from the museum’s image; the museum doesn’t endorse them.
- Object number
- 1985.64.22
- Credit
- Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington
- Type
- Painting
- Licence
- CC0 1.0 Universal
- Museum record
- See it on the museum’s site
