Signed and dated 1910 lower right.

A masterpiece of Maurice Berthon's short career, who died at the age of 25 from a wound sustained in the initial battles of World War I, the painting "Autumn" combines the study of the nude and the typical dimensions of the Academy with the sensitivity and suspended atmosphere of the last Symbolism: a group of nude figures are depicted in an autumn forest as allegories of childhood, motherhood, youth and love, an ideal Arcadian world far from the upheavals of history. The painting, of which some preparatory drawings are kept at the Petit Palais, Musée des beaux-arts de la ville de Paris (inv. PPD1272 / PPD1273 / PPD1274), was successfully exhibited at the Salon de Paris in 1914 together with "Femme endormie", as well as at the Berthon Retrospective Exhibition of 1919. It were the tragic events of the summer of 1914 that abruptly put an end to the longing for an "âge d'or" that, starting from the ancient myth, could contaminate the contemporary world: the world of dreams and that, progressed in parallel, of faith in science and progress, clashed with the reality of a war begun almost on a whim and which will prove to be one of the bloodiest and inhuman in history, putting an end, as well as to the life of the young Berthon, to the hopes of an entire generation at the dawn of what will be called the "Short 20th Century".