Oil paint on canvas
Tate Collection
Works with images
General Collection
Collection
<a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/edward-atkinson-hornel-1309" aria-label="More by Edward Atkinson Hornel" data-gtm-name="header_link_artist" data-gtm-destination="page--artist">Edward Atkinson Hornel</a>
Autumn
Presented by Sir Hugh Reid 1928
actions: postures and motions
autumn
children
clothing and personal items
emotions and human qualities
emotions, concepts and ideas
foliage
girl
innocence
landscape
objects
people
pinafore
plants and flowers
pool
reclining
seasons
sitting
water: inland
wooded
<p>During the later part of his career Hornel made a speciality of pictures of young girls in a landscape, or beside a pool of water or the sea. This was a subject he had invented and he painted it repeatedly. As with 'Autumn', the oddity of all these pictures is that the children seem embedded in leaves or undergrowth. The colours and shapes overwhelm the subject. The lack of reality implies that everything, the children and the swans, is a symbol of some general idea, perhaps about innocence, although this is not specified. The paintings were popular, probably on account of their sentimentality. Hornel made a great deal of money and eventually bequeathed his large house in Kirkcudbright as a Library and Art Gallery for the town.</p><p><em>Gallery label, September 2004</em></p>
painting oil paint canvas
11 February 2013 – 2 June 2013
2013-06-02
12 February 2013 – 2 June 2013
2013-06-02
2013-02-12
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2013-02-11
Looking at the View
Collection based display
Autumn
support: 1168 × 1022 mm
Presented by Sir Hugh Reid 1928
<p>During the later part of his career Hornel made a speciality of pictures of young girls in a <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/l/landscape" title="Glossary definition for 'Landscape'"><span>landscape</span></a>, or beside a pool of water or the sea. This was a subject he had invented and he painted it repeatedly. As with 'Autumn', the oddity of all these pictures is that the children seem embedded in leaves or undergrowth. The colours and shapes overwhelm the subject. The lack of reality implies that everything, the children and the swans, is a symbol of some general idea, perhaps about innocence, although this is not specified. The <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/p/painting" title="Glossary definition for 'Painting'"><span>paintings</span></a> were popular, probably on account of their sentimentality. Hornel made a great deal of money and eventually bequeathed his large house in Kirkcudbright as a Library and Art Gallery for the town.</p>
Display caption
2004-09-02T00:00:00
display-caption
DISPLAY_CAPTION
<p><b>N04401</b> AUTUMN 1904
<br/> </p>
<p>Inscr. ‘E A. Hornel 1904 [?]’ b.r., last figure more or less illegible.
<br/>Canvas, 46×40 1/4 (117×102).</p>
<p>Presented by Sir Hugh Reid, Bt. 1928.
<br/><i>Exh:</i> Royal Glasgow Institute of Fine Arts, Glasgow, 1905 (12, repr. pl.69).
<br/><i>Lit:</i> James L. Caw, <i>Scottish Painting Past and Present</i>, 1908, p.403.
<br/><i>Repr:</i> National Gallery, Millbank [Tate Gallery], <i>Review of the Acquisitions, 1927–29</i>, 1930, p.38.</p>
<p>James Caw stated that after his journey to Japan Hornel ‘settled down once more at Kirkcudbright [and] returned to the motives compounded of children in fancy dresses, flower-decked woods and watersides, and rich autumnal <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/l/landscape" title="Glossary definition for 'Landscape'"><span>landscape</span></a>’. The same children in rather similar poses appear in ‘Spring Idyll’ and in ‘Reverie’.</p>
<p>Sir Hugh Reid was an enthusiastic patron of Hornel's in Glasgow and wrote, in a letter of 16 June 1928, that he had ‘25 oil <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/p/painting" title="Glossary definition for 'Painting'"><span>paintings</span></a> by Hornel all produced - and dated (as he does with all his paintings) between 1885 and 1906’. The 1929 Tate Gallery British School catalogue gave the date on this picture as 1906, but 1904 is inscribed on the back of an old <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/p/photograph" title="Glossary definition for 'Photograph'"><span>photograph</span></a> sent by Sir Hugh Reid with his letter; furthermore, the picture was first exhibited in 1905.</p>
<p><b>Published in:</b>
<br/>Mary Chamot, Dennis Farr and Martin Butlin, <i>The Modern British Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture</i>, London 1964, I
<br/></p>

Catalogue entry
2004-10-06T00:00:00
catalogue-entry
CATALOGUE_ENTRY
actions: postures and motions autumn children clothing and personal items emotions and human qualities emotions, concepts and ideas foliage girl innocence landscape objects people pinafore plants and flowers pool reclining seasons sitting water: inland wooded