Golden Autumn Tree Over a Village Lake — Print & Oil Painting

One tree takes three quarters of the canvas and it is built entirely out of separate leaves. Each is a single flat dab of chrome yellow pressed on with the knife and left with its own hard edge, thousands of them packed into a mass that runs off the top and both sides, with pale cream flecks scattered through and small punched gaps of blue sky at the corners.

Because the canopy takes so much, everything else has been pushed to the margins. A red tiled roof and a lilac flowering bush hold the upper left, a low blue and red building sits at the right behind the trunk, and the entire human scene is squeezed into a narrow green band across the middle: a woman in white under a conical hat, a bicycle stacked with red and orange blooms, a vendor crouched over her baskets, two children in pink and blue at the water's edge.

The lower quarter is the lake, and it repeats the tree without any of its precision. Where the canopy is made of crisp separate marks, the reflection is a smooth wash of ochre and gold with the figures returned as soft coloured smears. The picture states the same thing twice, once sharp and once blurred, and the distance between the two handlings is what gives it depth.

Fallen leaves make the join. They lie along the green bank in ones and twos, a few are caught in the air, several float out on the water, so the yellow of the canopy is carried down through the middle of the picture and into the reflection.

The measured saturation is very high while the value stays moderate, which is what a canvas of solid chrome yellow over a brown gold lake will read. Part of our Vietnam collection, alongside an old street pavement reflecting a golden autumn tree and thatched huts beside the water under golden autumn trees.