From Schiele's last period, four years before his death, this urban landscape is very representative of the negative vision that the artist had of the city. He himself described his landscapes as "The dead city" or, as in this case, "The old city". The reduced range of colours, the flat and cold nature of the river Moldava, which appears right in the foreground, gives a sad and depressing atmosphere, almost of funeral autumn. Schiele himself used to say that "autumn fills the heart with sorrow and reminds us that we are only pilgrims in this land... the builder of the first city was Cain. Cain, who killed his brother Abel".
