'Autumn Leaves' (1856) by John Everett Millais (1829-96) is one of the highlights of the Manchester Art Gallery collection. It is a timeless but enigmatic ode to autumn, the season of leaf-clearing, bonfires, and smoke. John Ruskin described it as “by much the most poetical work the artist has yet conceived; and also, as fas as I know, the first instance of a perfectly painted twilight.”