Landscape in Autumn 1909

Gustave Loiseau made this oil painting, “Landscape in Autumn”, using short, broken brushstrokes that build up the surface. I find the subdued palette really striking. Up close, you can see how Loiseau worked with a kind of dry brush technique, layering the paint to create texture. The colors feel like they’ve been mixed not on the palette, but right on the canvas itself, giving it this hazy, shimmering quality. Look at the way the lavender and soft blues in the sky sort of bleed into the greens and browns of the landscape; it’s almost like the colors are breathing into each other. The telegraph poles punctuate the skyline and create a rhythmic division in the landscape, the verticality of these forms is echoed in the bare tree on the right side. Loiseau reminds me of Camille Pissarro, his contemporary, both trying to capture a fleeting moment, an atmosphere, through a very personal kind of mark-making. It’s a reminder that painting is not just about seeing but about feeling and translating that onto the canvas.