To Autumn and Dovedale by Moonlight

One of the things I noticed while studying Dovedale by Moonlight was the distinctive quietness that resonates throughout the painting. To me, this was somewhat reminiscent of "To Autumn" by Keats in its soft, unbroken tone. While my group determined that this landscape was probably meant to represent a clear summer night, the quiet and unassuming nature of the landscape certainly makes it comparable to Keats's poem. For me, the muted colours and the rendering of light create this soft, quiet atmosphere, comparable to the sweet images and gentle language in Keats's poem. The landscape is composed entirely in a palette of greys, greens and browns, with the exception of the moonlight--these muted colours downplay the grandeur of the landscape. When compared with the brilliance of Cole's colouring in Lake with Dead Trees, expressing the magnificence of the American landscape, the soft, quiet tone that Joseph Wright of Derby emphasises becomes all the more apparent. Rather than expressing the sublime and the wildness of nature, or even man's tumultuous relationship with it, Wright instead chooses to express a moment of quiet, as if this is a moment in which nature is truly herself, completely untouched and unmarred by human presence--a moment which would have been rare for the English landscape at this time. This connects somewhat to "Think not of them, thou hast thy music too", as Wright chooses to highlight this specific, human-less moment in the landscape, perhaps highlighting the beauty of nature's music without the presence of man. Additionally, the notion of changing seasons and more broadly, change itself, that we see in "To Autumn" is also suggested in this painting. To me, this is best most apparent in the swelling of the clouds around the moon: it is in their forms that we find the most movement in the painting, and they seem almost to be swirling, indicating perhaps a change in weather, and evoke to me in some sense the sands of time, constantly in motion. The illuminated clouds that peak over the skyline also indicate with their colouring and their placement something peaking over the edge of the painting where we cannot see, some illumination or change that is imminent. Overall, I felt that this painting certainly expressed some of the most important ideas and themes from Keats's "To Autumn", most notably his very quiet, unassuming tone.