"Chill October" 1870 by Millais

Chill October, the first of the large-scale Scottish Landscapes Millais painted periodically throughout his later career. Usually autumnal and often bleakly unpicturesque, they evoke a mood of melancholy and sense of transience that recalls his cycle-of-nature paintings of the later 1850's, especially Autumn Leaves and The Vale Of Rest, though with little or no direct symbolism or human activity to point to their meaning. In 1870 Millais returned to full landscape pictures, and over the next twenty years painted a number of scenes of Perthshire where he was anually found hunting and fishing from August until late into the autumn each year. Most of these landscapes are autumnal or early winter in season and show bleak, dank, water fringed bog, loch and riverside. Millais never returned to "blade by blade" landscape painting, nor to the vibrant greens of his own outdoor work in the early fifties, although the assured handling of his broader freer, later style is equally accomplished in its close observation of scenery. For several of these compositions Like the landscapes which followed it, Chill October is set in Scottish countryside where Millais often painted bleak windswept scenes, sometimes showing solitary human beings exposed to the bitter weather. In their very different ways, Millais late landscapes and Leighton's late studies of reclining women both initiate a form of early symbolism, suggesting a deeper human meaning beyond the ostensible subject of the picture. Chill October, the view across a windswept reach of the Tay..Millais braved wind rain, painting out of doors to achieve his desired aim. His declared intention was to capture the "sentiment" of the places depicted. During this period (1867-1871) Millais enjoyed excellent deer-stalking on Braemore, Fannich, Loch Luichart, Dunrobin, and Loch More. It was October 10th before he got back again to Perth. And now came upon him in overwhelming force the desire he had long entertained to paint at least one landscape in the country he loved so well. For years past he had thought of this , but the demand for his works becoming ever more and more pressing, he could rarely escape from town before the middle of August, and must generally be back at his work again in October, just as Scotland was putting on its most attractive garb. His chance came at last. A subject that greatly fancied was close at hand, and he could now find time to paint it. Away down the river Tay, some five miles below Perth, is a little backwater whose shores are covered with tall reeds and rushes, the haunt of duck and moorhen and other aquatic birds, and between this backwater and the river is a long strip of land covered with willows. Nothing here one would think demanding special attention; and , in fact, though many artists must have passed the place by railway, no one had yet been tempted to stop and paint it. But to Millais this wild landscape, with trees and rushes swaying in the wind as he had often seen them , was full of a beauty all its own that he must needs present on canvas. Stopping therefore one evening at the little station of Kinfauns, he made arrangements for commencing work at once; and so Chill October came into existence.