Autumn

By 1908 Toorop had spent about two decades painting in dots and flecks of divided color, and Autumn is one of the last of his bright landscapes in that manner. The season does much of the work: the reds, ochres and yellows of turning leaves are exactly the kind of subject that pointillism, with its tiny separate touches of pure pigment, was built to catch. Set the warm dots beside cooler ones and the whole surface seems to flicker. Within a few years he gave most of his energy to linear, religious subjects, and luminous outdoor scenes like this one grew rare in his work.