Autumn Landscape With Trees 1905

Giovanni Boldini made this watercolour painting, "Autumn Landscape With Trees," in 1905, and you can just see him there. It's that quiet moment when the leaves are thinking about turning, and there’s a certain looseness about it all. Boldini's really got a grip on capturing that fleeting feeling of autumn. The paint is thin, almost like he's just breathing color onto the page. I can almost imagine him quickly sketching the scene. The way he layers washes of grey, brown, and touches of green and red... it’s like he's layering time itself. It's a different mood from the highly finished society portraits he was also painting. I bet making this was a real release for him. A lot of painters were turning to landscape at this time – it makes sense, doesn't it? To want to get outside and just… look. He's right there in that conversation, seeing what paint can do.