This is one of several paintings Gear completed in the autumn of 1950. A similar but larger work also titled ‘Autumn Landscape’ was painted for the Festival of Britain show ‘Sixty Painters for ‘51’ in 1951. Although awarded the Arts Council purchase prize, it was denounced by the president of the Royal Academy, Sir Alfred Munnings, who deemed it as a “scheming, self-conscious, anglicised, fifty-year old repetition of the École de Paris”. This earlier version was one of the last paintings Gear completed before leaving Paris and returning to England. It shows the distillation of a biomorphic tree-like form in jagged shapes, with seasonal colouring and tonality of landscape. The colours and black, web-like lines are typical of Gear’s work from this period.