Autumnal Interpretations...

Autumn is waiting just around the corner.  I am looking forward to the Autumnal Equinox and everything it brings with it.  The mood shift of Fall.  The air begins to cool, the leaves begin to turn, and the days begin to shorten.  An energy resides there that is unlike any other the year through.  I am ready to say farewell to Summer, and greet my favorite time of year...Autumn.

During these early morning hours of the long night, I usually spend some quality time online.  Most times, working on something for my blog.  Tonight I was looking up an image for a post, a painting by John William Waterhouse.  There are so many of his works that I love, but this particular one has always reminded me of Autumn.  While I was looking for that particular image, I decided to look for some other paintings by famous artists. There are so many beautiful pieces, so I decided to post a number of them.  So many artistic representations of an artist's autumn.  Actually, there are many times that I have been looking at an autumnal setting and have thought how much it looked like an oil painting.

I'm going to start off with the Waterhouse...

(John William Waterhouse, "Boreas" c.1902)

"Even if something is left undone, everyone must take time to sit still and watch the leaves turn."

~ Elizabeth Lawrence

(Vincent Van Gogh, "Autumn Landscape" c.1885)

(Frederick Hendrik Kaemmerer,  "Tea In The Garden, Autumn"  

~ I couldn't find a year for this one, but I would guess it to have been painted in the late 1800's; Kaemmerer lived between 1839-1902)

"Delicious autumn!  My very soul is wedded to it,

and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth

seeking the successive autumns."

~ George Eliot

(Claude Monet, "Harvest Autumn"  c.1890-91)

(Winslow Homer, "Autumn"  c.1877)

(John Otis Adams,  "The Closing Of An Autumn Day"  c.1901)

"I have come to a still, but not a deep center,

A point outside the glittering current;

My eyes stare at the bottom of a river,

At the irregular stones, iridescent sandgrains,

My mind moves in more than one place,

In a country half-land, half-water.

I am renewed by death, thought of my death,

The dry scent of a dying garden in September,

The wind fanning the ash of a low fire.

What I love is near at hand,

Always, in earth and air."

~ Theodore Roethke, 'The Far Field'

(Alphonse Mucha,  "Autumn"  c. 1896)

(Isaac Levitan,  "Autumn Day, Sokolnicki Park"  c. 1879)

(Hans Anderson Brendekilde, "A Wooded Path In Autumn"  c.1902)

"The leaves fall patiently

Nothing remembers or grieves

The river takes to the sea

The yellow drift of leaves."

~ Sara Teasdale

(John Everett Millais,  "Autumn Leaves"  c.1855-56)

(John Atkinson Grimshaw,  "Autumn Morning"  c.1864)

"I saw old Autumn in the misty morn

Stand, shadowless like Silence, listening

To Silence."

~ Thomas Hood

(Georgia O'Keefe,  "Autumn Leaves, Lake George NY"  c.1924)

(John Otis Adams,  "Autumn On The Whitewater"  c. 1901)

(Giuseppe Arcimboldo,  "Autumn"  c. 1573)

"Withered vines, gnarled trees, twilight crows,

river flowing beneath the little bridge,

past someone's home.

The wind blows from the west

where the sun sets, it blows

across the ancient road,

across the bony horse,

across the despairing man

who stands at heaven's edge."

~ Ma Chih-Yuan, 'Meditation In Autumn'

(Wassily Kandinksy,  "Autumn In Bavaria"  c. 1908)