Trees in Art
In 1828 Samuel Palmer delineated the tortuous forms of the ancient oaks and beeches of Lullingstone Park in Kent, treating them like an exercise in studying the human figure. He wrote about trying to capture 'the grasp and grapple of the roots; the muscular belly and shoulders; the twisted sinews.' In the resulting drawings, the trees have such vigour and energy that you almost expect them to move. Palmer is famous for the visionary pastorals he produced while living in Shoreham in the 1820s, and he has imbued his trees with a sense of mystery and divinity.
British Artists
British artists have long been fascinated by trees. Britain has relatively few native species of tree, but it has more ancient trees than other countries, especially oaks and yews - parkland and churchyard trees, left to grow to their full circumference and venerated for their antiquity. There has been concern over the shortage of trees in Britain for a long time, even before the alarm was raised eloquently in John Evelyn's much-reprinted book, Sylva (1664). In the following centuries British woodland was depleted by early industrialism, and by the need for wooden ships in trade and war. Planting trees became a patriotic act. At the same time, the eighteenth-century fashion for landscape gardening meant that many landowners took an interest in their aesthetic as well as their economic value. The artist Paul Sandby became particularly skilled at producing watercolours of beech trees for his landowning patrons.
Influential Books on Trees
in the years around 1800 many books were published on the characters of trees. Writers argued over their respective merits: was the oak the most beautiful tree? Or the beech? Was the horse chestnut in flower a fine, or a disagreeable sight? There were plenty of specialised drawing manuals, giving practical instructions to help both amateurs and professionals, and there were also lavish volumes of etchings and lithographs of famous trees. Jacob George Strutt's book Sylva Britannica (1826) brought together forty portraits of named trees, with historical commentary. It included the Ankerwyke Yew, the Tortworth Chestnut and the Fredville Oak (known as Majesty), which were celebrated as ancient in the early 1800s and still survive today. In a memorable phrase, Strutt described ancient trees as 'silent witnesses of the successive generations of men.'
Tree History
Ancient trees were valued as repositories of history. Old oaks - the 'monarchs' of the forest - were associated with the Druids, admired in the eighteenth century as the original Ancient Britons. The Ankerwyke Yew was thought to have witnessed the signing of Magna Carta, and other trees were regarded as sites of early parliaments.
Trees as inidividual 'characters'
Many writers and artists thought of trees in human terms - they wrote their 'biographies', painted their portraits, strove to convey their 'character.' John Constable's large, very detailed drawing of a Scots pine and a larch, made on four sheets of paper and exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1834, may have been a commission from a neighbour. The larch is perfectly upright while the pine seems to twist and turn, like a ballet dancer supported by a strong partner. Constable also produced meticulously drawn portraits of elm and ash trees - the ash being his particular favourite. He would have been horrified to witness first the elm, and now the ash, disappearing from the countryside he loved so much, as a result of Dutch elm disease in the 1970s and ash dieback today.
Humans and Trees
British artists also celebrated the symbiotic relationship between humans and trees, and the contribution of trees to wellbeing. George Price Boyce's watercolour, entitled At Binsey was rejected by the Royal Academy in 1862, like many other innovative works by the Pre-Raphaelites. Pollarded willows were then, and still are now, a characteristic sight in the river valleys of lowland Britain. Some commentators (including John Ruskin) thought them ugly, but others appreciated their knobbly trunks and slender branches, which act here as a screen against the bright sky. Along with wooden fences and an apple tree, ripe with fruit, they pick up and reflect the sunshine in this appealing domestic scene. A mother and baby sit on the grass next to the apple tree, guineafowl peck nearby, and other birds are seen around the dovecote and amongst the leaves - a reminder of the importance of trees to wildlife.
The Death of Trees
In the twentieth century, another artist who showed a particular passion for trees was Paul Nash. He admired Samuel Palmer and agreed with Palmer that trees were like people - or indeed, really were people. In his paintings of the First World War, he used powerful tree imagery to convey his despair at the loss of life in the trenches. The dead trees in his painting, We Are Making a New World (1918, Imperial War Museum, London) have become a classic icon of environmental as well as human catastrophe, a warning for our own time.
