karin giesinger

Thousands of tiny brushstrokes went into this autumn path, painted by the Danish artist Hans Andersen Brendekilde in 1902. The image below is in high definition, so zoom in and look at the leaves one by one... The path runs through a wood at the height of autumn, the trees turning gold and orange and red, and the ground so thickly covered in fallen leaves that you can almost hear them under your feet. A woman sits alone on a bench at the side of the path, while two figures walk away into the distance, and the whole scene glows with that soft, low light you only get on a clear afternoon at this time of year. The man who painted it was born Hans Andersen in 1857, into a poor family on the island of Funen, and as a boy he did chores on a farm. When he became a painter, there was another young artist working on the same kinds of subjects, also called Andersen, and people kept confusing them. So in 1884 the two friends solved the problem together: each took the name of the village he came from. Hans Andersen became Brendekilde, and his friend became L.A. Ring, one of the greatest Danish painters of his time. For much of his career, Brendekilde painted the harsh lives of Danish farmworkers, but as he grew older he turned more and more to the beauty of the countryside. This is one of those paintings: a quiet path, a bench, and the kind of autumn day that makes you want to sit down for a while and watch the leaves fall...