Autumn 1957

Moishe Smith made this print, called "Autumn," sometime during his lifetime, using an etching plate to create the image. I imagine Smith, scraping and biting into the metal, trying to catch that end-of-year feeling. Look at the skeletal trees! They don’t have the youthful arrogance of spring, but a seasoned grace, wouldn’t you say? The scratchy lines build up such a complex, textured surface. He creates not just what we see, but also what we feel – the crisp air, the damp earth, the quiet melancholy of the season. The tonal gradations throughout the print are stunning. Smith is speaking to a long tradition of landscape artists, but he’s doing it in his own voice, with a modern sensibility. It makes me think about how artists are always talking to each other across time. Smith probably looked at a lot of landscape etchings himself!