FOR Vincent van Gogh, autumn was the most beguiling and poetic of seasons. ‘As long as autumn lasts,’ he wrote, ‘I shall not have hands, canvas and colours enough to paint the beautiful things I see.’ Here was the chance to use a myriad of rich tones, to fill skies with the drama of clouds and lay down in paint the sense of change in the air.
Autumn was a subject van Gogh turned to again and again. Avenue of Poplars in Autumn (1884), Autumn Landscape with Four Trees (1885), Autumn Landscape at Dusk (1885), Les Alyscamps (1888) and Falling Autumn Leaves (1888)—the season had a hold on him. And in 1889, between October and December, at the asylum near Saint Rémy where he was recovering from the breakdown heralded by the self-mutilation of his ear, it hadn’t let go. There, he depicted olive trees buffeted by the wind and painted over a fizzing picture of a flowering hillside with an image of a grey and green ravine instead. His colours, still rich, had darkened and the mood, for all the tossing and turning brushstrokes, was sombre. There was a chill in the air. Van Gogh sensed, it seems, that he was painting the autumn of his own life. The following summer, he killed himself.
Happiness in small things
Putting life into perspective and forces of nature in farming
Colour vision
In an eye-baffling arrangement of geometric shapes, a sinister-looking clown and a little girl, Test Card F is one of television’s most enduring images, says Rob Crossan
'Without fever there is no creation'
Three of the top 10 operas performed worldwide are by the emotionally volatile Italian composer Giacomo Puccini, who died a century ago. Henrietta Bredin explains how his colourful life influenced his melodramatic plot lines
The colour revolution
Toxic, dull or fast-fading pigments had long made it tricky for artists to paint verdant scenes, but the 19th century ushered in a viridescent explosion of waterlili
Bullace for you
The distinction between plums, damsons and bullaces is sweetly subtle, boiling down to flavour and aesthetics, but don’t eat the stones, warns John Wright
Lights, camera, action!
Three remarkable country houses, two of which have links to the film industry, the other the setting for a top-class croquet tournament, are anything but ordinary
I was on fire for you, where did you go?
In Iceland, a land with no monks or monkeys, our correspondent attempts to master the art of fishing light’ for Salmo salar, by stroking the creases and dimples of the Midfjardara river like the features of a loved one
Bravery bevond belief
A teenager on his gap year who saved a boy and his father from being savaged by a crocodile is one of a host of heroic acts celebrated in a book to mark the 250th anniversary of the Royal Humane Society, says its author Rupert Uloth
Let's get to the bottom of this
Discovering a well on your property can be viewed as a blessing or a curse, but all's well that ends well, says Deborah Nicholls-Lee, as she examines the benefits of a personal water supply
Sing on, sweet bird
An essential component of our emotional relationship with the landscape, the mellifluous song of a thrush shapes the very foundation of human happiness, notes Mark Cocker, as he takes a closer look at this diverse family of birds
