Autumn

Autumn, at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid, dates to around 1875 and shows Church applying his signature luminism to the American autumn landscape — a subject with particular resonance in the Hudson River School tradition, where the blazing foliage of northeastern American forests was a recurring emblem of both natural abundance and American identity. By the mid-1870s Church was increasingly painting smaller, more intimate works alongside his monumental canvases, and Autumn reflects a shift toward the quieter pastoral mode that would characterise his later career.

Church renders the autumn foliage with the warm ochres, crimsons, and deep golds of the northeastern forest in October, the colour applied with careful attention to the varied tones produced by different tree species in the same season. His characteristic luminous sky provides a cooler, atmospheric contrast to the warm chromatic richness of the foliage mass.