Masterpieces of autumn paintings stir the heart.

Autumn weather is so unpredictable. Some days the sky is crystal clear, the sun shining brightly. Other days the clouds hang low, and a gray mist drifts around the branches of trees beginning to shed their leaves. Whether autumn is joyful or sad, whether the scenery is vibrant or gloomy, it seems to reflect the mood of the people.

John Everett Millais captured the unique emotions of autumn in two paintings:Autumn leaves(1855) andOctober is a cold month.(1870). Both paintings were created in Perth, Scotland, where Millais lived. InAutumn leavesFour young women were gathering leaves, piling them up, and building a campfire. Gray smoke began to rise. The garden behind them was dark, with tall, slender trees, and here and there, wisps of green clouds clung to the sky, tinged with a brilliant orange-yellow. The setting sun cast shadows on the young women's faces. Their cheeks flushed, as if tinged with the red of the leaves. The viewer could almost feel the crisp rustling of the leaves, the warm smoke rising in the cool twilight. Millais painted many kinds of leaves, in various shapes and colors, falling and arranged in layers, as if signaling the changing of seasons, and evoking thoughts of youth, radiant for a fleeting moment before quickly fading away with the unchanging flow of time.

October is a cold month.The painting evokes in the viewer a sense of both weather and mood, conveyed through the autumnal landscape of the North. A sky dotted with faint wisps of clouds reflects onto the calm surface of the Tuy River. From the riverbank, the water is merely a strip of light leading straight to the hazy green hills in the distance. A small strip of land in the middle of the river, with its towering trees and dense reeds along the banks like a golden carpet, layers upon layers seem to isolate the viewer outside the painting, into a realm of loneliness, coldness, and gloom.

But hidden withinOctober is a cold month.There remains a serene beauty, in the gently pearly-tinged clouds, in the free-flying birds, standing out against the vast, unspoiled backdrop of vibrant golden reeds along the water's edge. In the melancholy of autumn, there is still hope.

Whether sad or happy, the colors of autumn are often subdued and warm: yellow, orange, red, brown. As in his paintings of autumn landscapes at Alyscamps, an ancient Roman cemetery in Arles, France, van Gogh generously poured vibrant yellow over rows of poplar trees, a striking contrast to the rows of stone tombstones. Gauguin accompanied him to Alyscamps that day and chose to include a different perspective of the place in his paintings: a romantic, tree-lined path bearing the footprints of beautiful women. In the last days of October 1988, the two artists diligently painted six pictures at Alyscamps, until a rainstorm arrived, bringing with it a chill that ended the autumn season.

Artists, from Childe Hassam and Gustav Klimt to Henri Rousseau, Pierre Bonnard, and Egon Schiele, seem to have never spared the effort in gilding their autumn paintings. The golden hues of sunlight, dry leaves, daisies, and ripening rice fields... or the endless golden of birch forests in Levitan's paintings, evoke nostalgia for Russia in many. The winding river, flowing along gently sloping meadows and connecting to the forest, suggests a sense of wistful uncertainty. The clear blue sky, with its floating clouds carried by the light breeze and weak rays of sunlight stretching across the landscape, creates a magical, shimmering moment of transition between seasons—bright yet subtly tinged with melancholy.

With incredible color accuracy,Hyde ParkLondon, England, looks more beautiful than ever in Camille Pissaro's paintings, where the beauty of nature is displayed in its entirety without being vulgar. The English painter Joseph Mallord William also clearly demonstrated his talent in recreating the wonder of nature with watercolors and oil paints, helping to elevate the landscape genre to its rightful place, as seen in the spectacular autumn scene in...The Fountain of LazinessIn Jean-Francois Millet's paintings, autumn is tinged with more somber tones, but not melancholy; on the contrary, it is imbued with the peaceful and tranquil atmosphere of the countryside after the harvest.

But autumn is also the season of lingering feelings, longing, and nostalgia. In the sudden, fleeting rains, the landscape turns withered, easily evoking a vague sadness and a sense of loneliness. Why is autumn in Wassily Kandinsky's paintings so cold? Can those red leaves offer any warmth to the heart?

Edward Hopper, on the other hand, captures the fading autumn moment in Cape Cod, with the deserted road seemingly observed from the window of a passing car, the entire landscape turning a silent gray to make way for winter.

Paul Klee's autumn paintings are more abstract and feature a more diverse color palette. While seemingly simple, childlike, and innocent at first glance, his paintings utilize a variety of techniques such as watercolor, ink, oil, and pastel, combining them in a complex and varied way, ranging from monochrome to polyphonic.

When discussing the most beautiful autumn landscape paintings, one cannot overlook Claude Monet and his works depicting the French countryside. His use of color and soft brushstrokes is almost perfect. This is evident in his paintings of autumn in Argenteuil orThe road on Saint Martin Island.

Claude Monet paintedAutumn effect in ArgenteuilIn late 1873, the Impressionist movement was beginning to flourish in Paris. At that time, Argenteuil was a developing industrial center on the outskirts of Paris, and a frequent subject in the paintings of many Impressionist artists because this small town served as a weekend retreat for Parisians. The painting captures the vibrant colors of a sunny autumn day, with shimmering leaves and sky reflected on the water of the Seine River. The striking contrast between the golden foliage and the clear blue water might evoke images of Japanese woodblock prints.

With over 30,000 works, Katsushika Hokusai is best known as the author of a series of woodblock prints.36 views of Mount Fuji, in thereThe Big Bang in KanagawaIt has become an icon of Japan. Hokusai also has a series of other famous paintings that were used to illustrate the book.Hiaku-nin-isshiu(The Songs of One Hundred Poets). The first poem isEmperor TenchiThe painting depicts the Emperor taking shelter from the rain in a roadside hut while watching the harvesters work. In the illustration, several travelers walk along a narrow road where farmers are carrying their harvest home. In the distance, a few simple huts are nestled among the trees, with low hills visible in the mist. In the center of the painting, three tall, slender trees stand out against the sunset sky. Hokusai's brushstrokes are fluid and free; although the painting uses somber colors, it is concise and embodies the spirit of Japanese painting.

Jasper Francis Cropsey is often called the "painter of autumn," with dozens of vibrant autumn landscape paintings, mostly of the Northeastern United States, such as New York and New Jersey. The American landscapes depicted in Cropsey's paintings are often vast, expansive, peaceful, and warm, with magnificent shades of yellow, orange, and red. When Queen Victoria visited Cropsey's exhibition in London, she felt the paintings weren't entirely realistic and that the artist had exaggerated the intense colors of the autumn foliage in his homeland. Cropsey had actual yellow and red leaves sent from America to England to prove to the Queen and the world that the magical beauty of North American autumn in his paintings was completely authentic. This was perhaps the first instance in history of an artist having to prove that he "didn't use filters"!

For many years, the gentle autumn has been the muse of renowned artists around the world, with its touch of melancholy, the streets covered with dry leaves, the lingering autumn breezes, and the last rays of dry sunlight before summer departs. Artists seem to become more sensitive when autumn arrives; a single rustling leaf or a drop of sunlight on the doorstep is enough to prompt them to pick up their brushes and converse with the season.

Huong Thao