Portraits of trees by Claude Lorrain, 17th century

Claude Lorrain
Trees
ca. 1650
wash drawing
British Museum

This group of tree drawings by Claude Lorrain (1600-1682) provided me with a sufficient motive to leave the house just after sunrise on this bright cold New Year's Day. Earlier in the week I had walked past a startling example of an actual Claude Lorrain tree-clump in Golden Gate Park. There it stood in the middle of San Francisco, like a time-traveler from 17th-century Rome. On the day I saw this unexpected sight I did not have a camera, but I took one along this morning to prove that the mystical resemblance was no fantasy.

Laurels
Golden Gate Park
1 January 2016

Claude Lorrain
Pine tree
1665
drawing
British Museum

Claude Lorrain
Tree
ca. 1640-50
drawing
British Museum

Claude Lorrain
Trees and dancers
ca. 1660-65
drawing
British Museum

Claude Lorrain
Trees on pink paper
ca. 1650
drawing
British Museum

Claude Lorrain
Tree at Villa Madama
ca. 1638
drawing
British Museum

 

Claude Lorrain
Tree
ca. 1635
drawing
British Museum

Claude Lorrain
Farm buildings
ca. 1640
drawing
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Claude Lorrain
Landscape with river
ca/ 1655
drawing
British Museum

Claude Lorrain
Trees
ca. 1645
drawing
British Museum

Claude Lorrain
View with trees
ca. 1638-40
drawing
British Museum

Claude Lorrain
Landscape with trees
ca. 1638
drawing
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Claude Lorrain
Landscape with pine grove
ca. 1635-38
wash drawing
British Museum

Sights

One of my lifelong friends spent part of this summer living in a house located high in the Berkeley hills. Before returning to her arid inland home in Southern California, she took this memory-picture of the airy skies that float and move above San Francisco Bay much of the time. She also sent several chromatic splendors encountered in San Francisco Chinatown.

The final memory-picture – fog, again – above rooftops and treetops of the Inner Sunset edged by dense green of Golden Gate Park.

Rainforest Under Glass

Most of these pictures were taken inside the 4-story Rainforest environment, humid and hot, where abundant tropical butterflies and birds in flashing colors occupy the same unrestricted spaces as the visitors on the upward-spiraling ramps, without barriers. All three of us could stand watching their hovering, their flight, their visits to a little round treetop feeding table. We stood right next to a shrub with little purple flowers while a dozen or more striped or incandescent-blue butterflies sucked nectar from those flowers with no seeming awareness of our human presence at all. (Perhaps treetop tropical butterflies have no need to comprehend what human beings might be, so feel safe in ignoring them.) A discreet sign by the elevator that whisks visitors from the top of the exhibit down to the tunnel underneath the rainforest pool (full of large active rainforest fish and other swimming creatures) asks people to check for any butterflies that might be clinging to their clothing, so as not accidentally to carry them out of their warm bright expensive artificial paradise.  

We had lunch on a terrace to one side of the new complex built by Renzo Piano for the California Academy of Sciences. Mabel Watson Payne had a baby ice cream cone for dessert.

Phoebe Hearst Fountain

When we reached the Music Concourse in Golden Gate Park on Wednesday morning Mabel rushed ahead to admire the lion and serpent sculpture in the middle of Phoebe Hearst Fountain. It is one of her favorite pieces of public art.

At the entrance to the Academy of Sciences, two policemen on Real Horses were talking to some older children. Mabel petted both horses and learned their names – Buster and Rusty, I think (though Mabel might correct me). One of the policemen gave her a sticker.

Bus Sun

On Wednesday morning Mabel Watson Payne and Daddy  took me along on the bus routes they have learned all about for destinations such as Golden Gate Park, where we were headed.

Black and White Cliff House

The framed photo of Mabel Watson Payne (taken about a year ago) was watching me while I got ready Sunday morning to meet her and her parents and her grandmother for brunch at the Cliff House, a very welcome Thanksgiving-weekend get-together, now that their travels are happily, safely concluded.

We arrived early, with the fog still surrounding everything. This is a popular place to bring out of town guests because the views from the dining room are amazing, and we knew it would be crowded later.

Mabel needed to visit each of the bronze starfish and octopuses installed to prevent skateboarding on the steps and ledges that descend to the restaurant. 

We had a corner table. Mabel faced a vast window overlooking Ocean Beach, with the restored windmill in Golden Gate Park just visible at the extreme left below. It is the object the adults are pointing out, until Mabel too can spot it.