Les Amoureux (Soir d'automne)

Émile Friant was just 25 when he painted this in 1888, in the countryside around Nancy in eastern France where he had grown up. His generation of naturalists wanted everyday life caught with almost photographic exactness, and he trains that precision on a small, tender subject, two young people crossing a wooden footbridge over the Meurthe on a cool autumn evening. He shows them largely from behind, their heads tilting together, so the whole feeling comes from posture rather than expression. It reads like a snapshot, though it is entirely built. The bare branches and the leaves underfoot set the moment in late October, near All Saints, when that part of Lorraine turns grey and cold.