Thatched Huts Beside the Water Under Golden Autumn Trees — Print & Oil Painting

Nothing in this painting has a hard edge. The whole surface has been blended until the brush marks are gone, and forms are separated by soft changes of colour rather than by outline, so the trees dissolve into the sky and the far bank dissolves into the water. It is the softest handling in this group and it makes the picture feel humid.

Gold is laid across the top like weather. Yellow and amber foliage crowds the upper left, upper centre and upper right, hanging down in fine trailing sprays, and the sky shows through it only as pale mint and cream. Below that the greens are darker and cooler, and the eye reads the change as a canopy over a shaded bank.

Two thatched huts sit just right of centre on a spit of raised ground. Their roofs are steep and triangular, laid in long parallel strokes of straw colour, and their walls are woven panels in a warmer brown. Between them a bare tree stands with a few dark branches, and at its foot are two round earthenware jars and a small seated figure in white, painted so lightly it is easy to miss.

The water occupies the entire left half and it is almost empty. It is painted in the palest greens and greys, holding a soft inverted echo of the gold above it, and it recedes into a white mist where the far bank should be. That emptiness balances the crowded right side, and it is the reason the picture feels quiet rather than merely full.

Along the near bank a band of small white flowers runs from the lower left to the lower centre, catching more light than anything at ground level. Broad palm fronds and a second thatched roof close the right edge. The measured value sits mid range and the saturation is moderate, which suits a canvas of muted gold and grey green. Part of our Vietnam collection, near a golden autumn tree over a village lake and turquoise trees framing a stilt house on the water.