Like many New Yorkers, Marguerite Zorach and her husband William sought respite from city life every summer, and over the summer of 1917 they retreated to Plainfield, New Hampshire. William Zorach recalled: “We had to dig into ourselves for material and had to build the material we found into new forms until it evolved a life of its own . . . . Marguerite did a series of watercolors of the woods, pictures that analyzed the colors and forms around her and built them into new combinations, yet retained the beauty of the woods.”

"New England Fall #3" was most likely painted during this sojourn. Inspired by Plainfield’s idyllic scenery, Zorach discarded conventional representation, paring down the New Hampshire woods and hills into overlapping, faceted planes. The allover surface patterning, geometric fragmentation, and flattened perspective demonstrate the artist’s sophisticated understanding of Analytic Cubism, while her nuanced palette is distinctly her own.