Automn

Autumn arrives here without any fuss. A cluster of trees stands near the water, one of them blazing orange while the others hold onto smaller patches of rust and gold. The rest of the scene is broad and simple: a stretch of green field, a winding river with sandy banks, and a pale sky that takes up nearly half the canvas. Arthur Wesley Dow flattened his shapes and kept his colors clean, closer to a printed poster than a detailed sketch of a real place.

Dow was an American painter and teacher who spent time studying Japanese woodblock prints, and you can see that influence in the way he arranged this landscape. He cared less about copying nature exactly and more about how the shapes and colors fit together, an idea he built into a famous teaching method used in art schools across the country. Georgia O'Keeffe was among his students, and her love of bold, simplified forms owes something to lessons like the ones behind this painting. The long shadows falling across the grass suggest a low afternoon sun, the kind that stretches everything sideways as the day winds down.