Automne

Overview

Automne (Russian Осень, oil on canvas, reported as 117 × 97 cm) is an autumn landscape usually dated 1883, though one transcription of a museum wall label gives 1884. It is said to be in the State Russian Museum, St Petersburg. The evidence for all of this is thin, and the entry says so rather than tidying it: the picture is not in the museum's online catalogue, its dimensions are unverified, and the attribution rests on secondary reports and a visitor's transcription of exhibition labels. Readers should treat the location and the measurements as unconfirmed.

It is probably *no. 39, Paysage d'Automne, 0,97 × 1,15 m*, in the 1885 posthumous catalogue -- the figures match if transposed. François Coppée, in his preface to that catalogue, describes seeing in her studio "a large landscape sketch -- the October mist at the water's edge, the trees half stripped, the big yellow leaves littering the ground", which is very likely this picture or a study for it.

No usable reproduction exists. The only file on Wikimedia Commons is a 500 × 390 pixel scan from a CD-ROM of 2000, below this project's threshold, so no image is included here.

Description

Marie never gave the picture a title in the diary, and identified it only when she lent it to Mme Bertaux's exhibition of the Femmes Peintres et Sculpteurs in March 1884: "j'ai donné le paysage (une allée de l'île de la Grande Jatte par un temps de brouillard, des feuilles sèches et la terre humide)" (103.0412) -- an avenue on the Île de la Grande Jatte in fog, with dry leaves and wet ground. Her working note when she began it calls it "une allée d'arbres aux tons dorés, toile moyenne" (102.0033): an avenue of trees in golden tones, on a medium canvas.

The identification of that Grande Jatte picture with the Automne reported in St Petersburg is an inference from subject and season, not a documented equivalence. It is the best available reading of the evidence and should be presented as such.

Making of the Work

It came out of a spell of casting about at the end of October 1883, when Un meeting had stalled and she wanted something she could actually finish: "pourquoi ne pas aller peindre le brouillard sur la Seine" (102.0029). Two days later she had found her motif and was keeping it to herself: "Sans déménager j'ai toutes les feuilles sèches et de toutes les couleurs du monde, là tout près, tout est arrangé mais je ne dirai rien avant de commencer" (102.0031). On 1 November she began, on the Île de la Grande Jatte -- the island crowded with canotiers, Bojidar escorting her (102.0033). Three years later Seurat would begin painting the same island.

The canvas is one strand of a larger ambition of that autumn, stated at 101.0487–0488: "je veux des espaces, des brouillards... un tableau de brumes, des ciels et des horizons argentés." A separate landscape campaign at Jouy belongs to the same weeks (102.0048).

References in Diary

- Context: 1883-10-02 (101.0487–0488) -- the wish for fog, silver skies and distances
- First mention: 1883-10-28 (102.0029) -- "pourquoi ne pas aller peindre le brouillard sur la Seine"
- 1883-10-30 (102.0031) -- the motif found, and kept secret
- 1883-11-01 (102.0033) -- begun: "Je vais travailler à la Grande Jatte, une allée d'arbres aux tons dorés, toile moyenne"
- 1883-11-16 (102.0048) -- the parallel landscape work at Jouy
- 1884-03-01 (103.0412) -- lent to the Femmes Peintres et Sculpteurs exhibition, with the description that identifies it

Related Entries

- #Art_practice -- Marie's work as an artist
- #Bojidar -- who went with her to the island
- #Un_meeting -- the big canvas this landscape was a relief from
- #Le_Printemps -- the other large outdoor picture of her last two years

Sources

- Catalogue des œuvres de Mlle Bashkirtseff, Union des Femmes Peintres & Sculpteurs, préface de François Coppée, Paris: Ludovic Baschet, 9 February 1885, no. 39 (Paysage d'Automne, 0,97 × 1,15 m) -- Gallica ark:/12148/bpt6k131932r
- State Russian Museum, artist page -- the museum's account of its holdings; this work is not among those published online
- All diary quotations from the French originals in `/content/_original/`