Fall Scene near Sisterdale

Scholars argue whether this painting represents Sisterdale, a small town 13 miles north of Boerne, Texas, in the Hill Country; or whether it was painted on Long Island during Julian Onderdonk's residency there. The composition is indebted to the influence of Onderdonk's second teacher, William Merritt Chase, particularly in the use of two small girls picking flowers in the left foreground. Chase frequently deployed his daughters in a similar fashion in his scenes of his family playing in the dunes of Shinnecock, Long Island. Onderdonk, who studied with Chase in 1901 at the Shinnecock Summer School, adopted this motif, especially in his earliest paintings. Regardless of its initial site of creation, the painting enjoyed success at the Texas State Fair in Dallas soon after it was made, helping ensure Onderdonk's popularity in his native state.