An October Morning

Osborne is most famous for his portraits. Landscape, however, was a prevalent genre he continued to explore throughout his working life. Like many of his contemporaries who studied on the continent during the 1870s and ‘80s, he was committed to painting rustic subjects in the open air. An October Morning is thought to have been painted in Walberswick near Southwold in Suffolk. This is where Osborne met the artist, Wilson Steer, who used the pier as a motif in his works and no doubt inspired An October Morning’s composition.

An October Morning’s apparently informal composition is actually very carefully arranged, the structure drawing the eye up, into the scene by way of zig-zagging diagonals. This technique creates a sense of pictorial depth that contradicts the seemingly flat treatment of the pebbled beach that emphasises the two-dimensionality of the painting’s surface. This flat treatment is achieved by using bright spots of pure colour. This rare adoption of the Impressionist technique of divisionism has been combined with his typically muted palette of beiges and greys. This muted palette conveying the dreary overcast aspect of an autumn morning may also conceivably be influenced by the Impressionists who used colour to depict light and atmosphere of a scene.

A seemingly humble scene, evidence suggests Osborne accorded it relative significance: the figures are drawn solidly, suggesting he made preparatory studies beforehand, and he has gone to great lengths to represent fine detail, as emphasised by the fishes in the foreground.