Autumn Leaves is possibly Deerstalkers favorite painting by John Everett Millais. The beauty of the young girls is set in contrast to the dying leaves. Youth, Millais tells us, is a passing thing. At best it can hope to grow old and die. It is a fundamentally pagan picture.The painting is said to be inspired by at visit to Tennyson i 1854 and by his poem The Princess, from which the following lines are taken:
Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean.
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy Autumn-fields,
And thinking on the days that are no more.
There remains, though, the riddle of the eldest girls left hand. Why does it look like a demon claw? Millais was as close to a photographer as a painter can get, so there is no doubt that it is intended to look like that. But why?
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Maybe he's not very good at hands, or she was wearing a glove on one hand to show off.
Millais was in many ways a rather dreadful painter, but he was good with every part of the human anatomy, including hands. But the glove is a fascinating thought. Anyway, it's a wonderful picture.
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