The Four Seasons on Canvas Autumn

This is a short series about paintings that depict the four seasons. I am starting with autumn and all of the beautiful colorful leaves. As I go through the seasons there’ll be links to the articles below.

European Artists

Autumn Leaves 1856 John Everett Millais

English artist John Everett Millais created this artwork of four women raking leaves at dusk in the Rodney Gardens in Perth, Scotland. Wisps of smoke can be seen between the leaves.

Autumn Landscape with Four Trees 1885 Vincent Van Gogh

Dutch artist Van Gogh created this artwork in Auvers on the northwestern outskirts of Paris, France. The artists enjoyed spending time outdoors painting. This is a beautiful and colorful painting depicting the change to the autumn season. All the colors blend nicely.

Autumn on the Seine at Argenteuil 1866 Claude Monet

French artist Claude Monet did some of this best artwork capturing the changing of seasons. This painting is one of his most famous and was inspired by a series of paintings that he did in 1866-1867. The painting was done in Argenteuil in the northwestern suburbs of Paris, France. It depicts an autumn day on the Seine River with a dark and cloudy sky. Some light shines from above illuminating the river and the buildings lining the banks. You can see a few trees on either side of the river that have not lost their leaves yet, while other trees are resplendent in orange and brown.

The Forest in Autumn 1866 Gustave Courbet

French artist Gustave Courbet created this artwork as an oil on canvas. It depicts Montmorency Forest which stretches along the Oise River near Paris, France. The autumn scene shows a stream with two oak trees. It is a close-up of a forest, painted in three different hues of the color brown, The painting is part of the artist’s series “The Paintings of Real Life”. This was his first large-scale landscape portraying only nature.

Autumn in Bavaria Wassily Kandinsky

Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky created this autumn painting in Bavaria, Germany. It is a landscape that depicts a forest with changing colors of leaves and a path through the woods. It is one of his most recognizable paintings.

Four Trees 1909 Egon Schiele

Austrian artist Egon Schiele created this artwork of four trees standing side by side, Their leaves in autumn colors with one tree almost bare. The painting can be viewed at the Leopold Museum in Vienna, Austria.

The Birch Wood Gustave Klimt

Austrian artist Gustave Klimt is a symbolist painter whose most popular artwork is titled The Kiss. The Birch Wood consists of five oil paintings completed between 1903 and 1907. It is a lovely look at autumn with the white barks of the birch trees and the colorful fallen autumn leaves.

American Artists

Autumn Woods 1886 Albert Bierstadt

German-American artist Albert Bierstadt enjoyed creating landscapes of the American West. This oil on canvas depicts all the lovely autumn colors on the trees in the forest and reflected in the water making the painting appear to be three-dimensional,

Autumn Frederic Edwin Church

American artist Frederic Edwin Church was a landscape painter of the 19th century. He was one of the first American artists to create American landscape paintings. The artist studied in Paris, France under French history painter and teacher Thomas Couture. The artist built Olana, a mansion on the banks of the Hudson River in New York State. He created this painting as an oil on canvas depicting a bend in the river showing the surrounding changes of the season. One can see the vegetation covering the rocks and tree trunks ranging in tones from green to red and reflected upon the river.

Autumn Afternoon the Wissahickon Thomas Moran

Irish-American artist Thomas Moran specialized in landscape painting of the American West. This painting depicts a pastoral scene in autumn on the banks of the Wissahickon River in the US state of Pennsylvania. It shows an October afternoon with trees in autumnal colors.

Starrucca Viaduct Pennsylvania Jasper Francis Cropsey

American landscape artist Jasper Francis Cropsey was a member of the Hudson River School, This painting depicts a colorful autumnal landscape with the woods, mountains, and valleys of the northeastern US.

Japanese Artist

Peasants in Autumn Katsushika Hokusai

Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai was a renowned ukiyo-e painter and printmaker of the Edokko School. In this painting, you can see the autumnal changes to the landscape. It also depicts peasants harvesting rice in a field during autumn,