An autumn walk in the English Garden of Munich

Anders Andersen-Lundby's 'Autumn Walk in the English Garden of Munich' (1887) depicts the celebrated public park in Munich — the Englischer Garten that was one of the largest city parks in the world — in its autumn transformation. The English Garden's combination of formal lawns, Chinese tower, and naturalistic woodland walks provided him with a subject that combined the cultivated landscape with the seasonal atmospheric conditions he specialized in. Munich was his primary base, and the Englischer Garten as subject connected his winter landscape specialty to the city he called home.

Andersen-Lundby renders the autumn park walk with attention to the golden and russet tones of October or November deciduous trees — the palette quite different from his typical winter white and blue. His figures of park walkers provide the human scale and social animation of the public park subject. His handling of the autumn light through thinning foliage captures the particular quality of the season — the light reaching further through the canopy than in summer, the colored leaves creating their own chromatic richness.