Exhibited: Charlottenborg 1928 no. 419, ill. in the catalogue. Here entitled “Efteraar” (Autumn). Charlottenborg, “Mindeudstillingen for L. A. Ring”, 1933 no. 209. Here entitled “Efteraar. Dame der ser ud af et Vindue” (Autumn. Woman looking out of a window). Ribe Kunstmuseum, Fuglsang Kunstmuseum, Øregaard Museum, “L. A. Ring. Årstiderne”, 2023, mentioned and ill. p. 91.

Literature: Peter Hertz, "Maleren L. A. Ring 1854–1933”, 1934, ill. p. 406 and mentioned pp. 407–408. Carl M. Woel, “L. A. Ring. Et levnedsrids”, 1937, mentioned p. 36. Henrik Wivel, ”L. A. Ring”, 1997, mentioned p. 59. Henrik Wivel, “L. A. Ring. Det glasklare hjerte”, 2020, ill. p. 274 and mentioned pp. 273–274.

Provenance: Merchant J. H. Melchior (1933).

When L.A. Ring's wife, Sigrid, died in 1923, the artist completely stopped painting. But after a few years, he was forced to resume work for financial reasons. The paintings created after this hiatus are characterized by melancholy and contemplativeness, especially in the compositions with figures. Three paintings of figures made in the years 1925, 1926 and 1927, including the present painting, are examples of Ring's reflections on the various stages of human life and the transition from life to death. These works belong to Ring's so-called “threshold motifs”, which show a solitary figure looking out through an open or closed door or window.

The earliest painting of the three, “In the Doorway. Ole Ring”, shows the artist’s son Ole at wintertime, who with a lost look in his eyes gazes out of a doorway at the bare trees. However, the future and brighter times lie ahead for the young man, who himself is still only in the spring of his life. In the second work, “Spring and the Old Man”, which was sold at auction at Bruun Rasmussen, the young man is replaced by an older gentleman. From the same half-open door in the cellar at Uglebjerget, with a view of Roskilde Cathedral, the old man looks out at the spring with the newly sprouted trees. Unlike the young man, however, the joys of spring are not for the older gentleman, who in the autumn of his life considers a bygone time of which he is no longer a part of.

In the present painting, “The Young Woman and the Autumn”, which is the third of the late threshold motifs, a woman is sitting in the living room at Uglebjerget and looks out over Roskilde Fjord. “With her head propped up against her hand, serious and contemplative, she lets her gaze search beyond the fjord towards the distance, where the light is fading, the shadows are growing – it has become the shortest autumn day heralding the coming of winter” (Hertz, "The Painter L.A. Ring”, p. 408). In this painting, it is as if the woman reflects on her own existence, which is currently framed by youth, but which at some point will turn into autumn – and eventually winter.

Especially the last two paintings invite the viewer to both compare and juxtapose. Where the old man looks at spring, of which he is no longer a part, the young woman looks at autumn, which she will at some point become a part of.

"In his last years, where L.A. Ring felt himself standing at the crucial threshold of his life, where further movement was no longer possible, he could not remain completely free of a certain sentimentality on behalf of life and impending death. Two paintings of Spring and the Old Man. Sankt Jørgensbjerg. Roskilde from 1926 and The Young Woman and the Autumn from 1927 create a melancholic resignation in the faces of the two people depicted. Both are indoors, but with the characteristic look of longing at the world they no longer seem to be a part of.” (Wivel, “L. A. Ring”, p. 59).