Autumn landscape 1900 - 1910

Ladislav Mednyánszky made this gorgeous landscape, sometime before 1919, with what looks like pastels. I’m imagining Mednyánszky layering those strokes, one on top of the other, to capture the feel of autumn. I bet he stood right there on the bank of that river with his pastels, trying to get it just right. The way he uses these marks, it’s almost like he's building up the scene, constructing it piece by piece. He almost makes the gold of the leaves look like gold leaf – that shimmery light that feels like a gift when the weather is turning grey. You know, painting is like a conversation across time, and it makes me think of other painters like Klimt, or even Whistler, who are also trying to capture a mood in a landscape. You can almost feel him searching for a way to communicate the melancholy of the end of summer. It's like he's saying something with every stroke, a feeling, a memory, maybe even a little bit of hope. It is never fixed or definitive, it's all open for interpretation.