A large landscape watercolor that is essentially a catalog of trees — each tree in the composition rendered in a different color, a different size, a different character, as if Sidney set himself the task of painting every kind of tree at once. The foreground is most vivid: a large purple tree at lower left, an orange-red bush at center, a dark green tree beside it, others in pink and green and gray-green — each individual, each distinct. Moving toward the background, the trees become smaller and cooler, transitioning through gray-green into blue trees at the middle distance, then into even paler forms at the horizon.
This color progression — warm saturated colors in the foreground, cool paler colors in the distance — is pure atmospheric perspective applied through color temperature rather than value. It works perfectly: the depth of the landscape reads immediately and naturally despite the non-naturalistic colors.
The landscape structure beneath the trees is loose and warm: ochre and yellow-gold ground, a gentle ridge at the horizon, a thin strip of blue-teal sky visible above. Small marks scattered throughout — dots, brief lines — suggest the texture of autumn ground. At left, a yellow circular form on the earth — perhaps a stone, perhaps a fallen fruit — is the most abstract single element.
The title The Autumn Inventory names the work's essential character: it is a counting, a cataloguing, a taking stock of what the trees are doing at the moment of the year when they become most various in their color.