Trees (leafless)

Benjamin Brecknell Turner
The Church Oak, Hawkhurst
ca. 1852-54
albumen print
Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh

William Craven, 2nd Earl of Craven
Study of an Ancient Oak Tree, Ashdown Park, Berkshire
ca. 1854
albumen print
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Charles Thurston Thompson
Oak, Albury Park, Surrey
ca. 1857-58
albumen print
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

James Sinclair and William Bainbridge
Queen Anne's Oak
1864
albumen silver print
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Edward L. Allen
Old Elm Tree, Boston Common
ca. 1865
albumen silver prints (stereograph)
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Anonymous British Photographer
Massive Tree
19th century
hand-colored albumen silver prints (stereograph)
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Magnus Jackson
Ancient Tree with Seated Group
ca. 1870-80
albumen print
Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh

Eugène Atget
Environs of Paris
ca. 1923-24
gelatin silver print
(printed by Berenice Abbott)
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Albert Renger-Patzsch
Tree
ca. 1930
gelatin silver print
Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio

Albert Winslow Barker
The Forgotten Tree
1933
lithograph
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio

Vilem Kriz
Untitled
1947
gelatin silver print
Denver Art Museum

Donna Theresa Miehl
Dead Tree
before 1956
drawing
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
(Achenbach Foundation)

Ryohei Tanaka
Winter Tree
before 1969
etching
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
(Achenbach Foundation)

Joel Snyder
Burr Oak, Lisle, Illinois
1971
platinum print
Art Institute of Chicago

William Christenberry
Pear Tree near Akron, Alabama
2000
C-print
Phillips Collection, Washington DC

Tacita Dean
Majesty
2006
mounted photograph with added gouache
Tate Gallery

from Praying Drunk

Next, confession – the dreary part. At night

deer drift from the dark woods and eat my garden.

They're like enormous rats on stilts except,

of course, they're beautiful. But why? What makes

them beautiful? I haven't shot one yet.

I might.

                  *               *            *              

Our Father, thank you for all the birds and trees,

that nature stuff. I'm grateful for good health,

food, air, some laughs, and all the other things

I'm grateful that I've never had to do

without. I have confused myself. I'm glad

there's not a rattrap large enough for deer. 

– Andrew Hudgins (1991)

Seasons in Pictures and Words

attributed to Hendrik van Balen
Cybele and the Seasons, with Garland
ca. 1615
oil on panel
Prado, Madrid

Giuseppe Maria Crespi
Apotheosis of Hercules, with the Four Seasons
ca. 1700
ceiling fresco
Palazzo Pepoli-Campogrande, Bologna

Bartolomeo Manfredi
Allegory of the Four Seasons
ca. 1610
oil on canvas
Dayton Art Institute, Ohio

ALL WORLDLY PLEASURES FADE

The winter with his griefly stormes no lenger dare abyde,
The pleasant grasse, with lusty grene, the earth hath newly dyde.
The trees have leves, the bowes down spread, new changed is the yere.
The water brokes are cleane sanke down, the pleasant bankes apere.
The spring is come, the goodly nymphes now dance in every place
Thus hath the yere most pleasantly of late ychangde his face.
Hope for no immortalitie, for wealth will weare away,
As we may learne by every yere, yea howres of every day.
For Zepharus doth mollifye the colde and blustering windes:
The somers drought doth take away the spryng out of our minds.
And yet the somer cannot last, but once must step asyde,
The Autumn thinkes to kepe his place, but Autumn cannot bide.
For when he hath brought furth his fruits and stuft the barns with corn,
The winter eates and empties all, and thus is Autumn worne.
Then hory frostes possesse the place, the tempestes work much harm,
The rage of stormes done make al colde which somer had made so warm
Wherefore let no man put his trust in that, that will decay,
For slipper wealth will not continue, pleasure will weare away.
For when that we have lost our lyfe, and lye under a stone,
What are we then, we are but earth, then is our pleasure gon.
No man can tell what god almight of every wight doth cast,
No man can say to day I live, till morne my life shall last.
For when thou shalt before thy judge stand to receive thy doom,
What sentence Minos doth pronounce that must of thee become.
Then shall not noble stock and blud redeme thee from his handes,
Nor sugared talke with eloquence shal lowse thee from his handes.
Nor yet thy lyfe uprightly led, can help thee out of hell,
For who descendeth downe so depe, must there abyde and dwell.
Diana could not thence deliver chaste Hyppolitus,
Nor Theseus could not call to life his friende Perithous.

– translated anonymously from the Odes of Horace and published (1557) in Tottel's Miscellany

Nicolas Poussin
Four Seasons (Spring) - Garden of Eden
1660-64
oil on canvas
Louvre, Paris

Nicolas Poussin
Four Seasons (Summer) - Ruth and Boaz
1660-64
oil on canvas
Louvre, Paris

Nicolas Poussin
Four Seasons (Autumn) - Return of the Spies
1660-64
oil on canvas
Louvre, Paris

Nicolas Poussin
Four Seasons (Winter) - The Deluge
1660-64
oil on canvas
Louvre, Paris

Francesco Foschi
Winter Landscape with Figures
ca. 1750-80
oil on canvas
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Francesco Foschi
Winter Landscape with Peasant Family
ca. 1750-80
oil on canvas
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Denys van Alsloot
Winter Landscape
1610
oil on panel
Louvre, Paris

Francisco Goya
Tapestry cartoon - Snowstorm
1786
oil on canvas
Prado, Madrid

William Williams
Thunderstorm with the Death of Amelia
(illustration of 'Summer' from James Thomson's poem, The Seasons)
1784
oil on canvas
Tate Britain

Caspar David Friedrich
Monk by the Sea
ca. 1808-10
oil on canvas
Alte Nationalgalerie Berlin

John Singer Sargent
Mannequin in the Snow
ca. 1891-93
oil on canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Photographs of 19th-century Trees

William Henry Fox Talbot
Oak Tree in Winter
ca. 1842-43
salted-paper print
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

John Jabez Edwin Mayall
Crystal Palace Hall with Large Tree, London
1851
daguerreotype
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

"There is a great deal of excitement over Monsieur Daguerre's invention, and nothing is more amusing than the explanations of this  marvel that are offered in all seriousness by our salon savants.  Monsieur Daguerre can rest easy, however, for no one is going to steal his secret. Truly, it is an admirable discovery, but we understand nothing at all about it; there has been too much explanation." 

– Madame de Girardin, writing under the pseudonym 'vicomte de Launais' in the ephemeral journal, Lettre parisienne, 1839 – quoted in The Arcades Project by Walter Benjamin

B.B. Turner
Hedgerow Trees, Clerkenleap
1852
salted-paper print
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

W.H. Nicholl
Windsor Park
1854
albumen silver print
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Roger Fenton
The Dark Walk, Stonyhurst
ca. 1856-58
albumen silver print
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Roger Fenton
Study of Tree
ca. 1856-58
albumen silver print
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Mrs. Jane St John
Tomb of Caius Cestius, Rome
ca. 1856-59
albumen silver print
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Édouard Baldus
Temple of Diana at Nîmes
ca. 1861
albumen silver print
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

"Some trees were associated with particular divinities for special reasons, like the mantic (oracular) oak of Zeus at Dodona; Athena's olive, which symbolized the source of Athens' prosperity; or the laurel of Apollo with its apotropaic and purifying properties. The palm was sacred to Leto on Delos; on Laconian Boeae, Artemis Soteira was worshipped in the form of a myrtle, and she had a cult as Kedreatis in Arcadian Orchomenus. In popular belief trees housed some kind of 'soul' – spirits of the woods and mountains lived in them. Some were revered for their age. The nymphs haunted sacred groves, which were the first natural sanctuaries of the gods. Poseiden had a sacred grove at Onchestus in Boeotia, Athena on Phaeacia. At Curium on Cyprus the sanctuary of Apollo Hylates arose from a sacred grove. A sacred fig-tree stood in the Roman Forum near the sanctuary of Rumina the goddess of nurture or nursing."

– Oxford Classical Dictionary 

C.L. Weed
Big Tree in Mariposa Grove
ca. 1860-64
hand-colored albumen silver print
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Samuel Bourne
Great Deodar, Simla
1863
albumen silver print
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

James Sinclair and William Bainbridge
Great Beech on Manor Hill
1864
albumen silver print
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

James Sinclair and William Bainbridge
Queen Anne's Oak
1864
albumen silver print
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Anonymous photographer
Old Chestnut Tree – Dedham, Massachusetts
ca. 1865
albumen silver print
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Anonymous photographer
The Park
ca. 1865
albumen silver print
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Vernon Heath
Beech Trees, Inverary
1871
albumen silver print
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

"Many Mediterranean lands were forested in ancient times, but these timber stands were drastically reduced by human exploitation and by the grazing of animals, especially goats. The Mediterranean climate is capable of sustaining forests so long as they are intact, but once the trees are cut, the combination of marginal rainfall and grazing animals makes forest regeneration difficult, if not impossible. In general the history of timber supplies is one of gradual depletion, with little effort in antiquity to replant harvested lands. Only in those areas of continental rainfall conditions which lie at some distance from dense human settlement (e.g. the mountains of Macedonia) have forests survived into modern times. Thus lacking much apparent physical correlation between modern scrubland and ancient forests, we are dependent upon references in the ancient authors for a description of the location and abundance of ancient timberland."

– Oxford Classical Dictionary

Amsterdam Photographs by George Hendrik Breitner

George Hendrik Breitner
Winter along the Amstel, Amsterdam
ca. 1890-1910
gelatin silver print
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

George Hendrik Breitner
Winter along the Singel, Amsterdam
ca. 1890-1910
gelatin silver print
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

George Hendrik Breitner
Canal buildings, Amsterdam
ca. 1894-98
gelatin silver print
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

George Hendrik Breitner
Canal reflections, Amsterdam
ca. 1890-1910
gelatin silver print
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

"Whereas, before Karrer went mad, I used to go walking with Oehler only on Wednesday, now I go walking – now that Karrer has gone mad – with Oehler on Monday as well. Because Karrer used to go walking with me on Monday, you go walking with me on Monday as well, now that Karrer no longer goes walking with me on Monday, says Oehler, after Karrer had gone mad and immediately gone into Steinhof. And without hesitation I said to Oehler, good, let's go walking on Monday as well. Whereas on Wednesday we always walk in one direction (in the eastern one), on Monday we go walking in the western direction, strikingly enough we walk far more quickly on Monday than on Wednesday, probably, I think, Oehler always walked more quickly with Karrer than he did with me, because on Wednesday he walks much more slowly and on Monday much more quickly. You see, says Oehler, it's a habit of mine to walk more quickly on Monday and more slowly on Wednesday because I always walked more quickly with Karrer (that is on Monday) than I did with you (on Wednesday)."

– from the novella Walking, originally published by Thomas Bernhard in 1971, translated by Kenneth J. Northcott and published in English by University of Chicago Press in 2003

George Hendrik Breitner
Cavalry troops
ca. 1890-1910
gelatin silver print
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

George Hendrik Breitner
Children in an alley
ca. 1890
gelatin silver print
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

George Hendrik Breitner
Children playing on sand pile
ca. 1890-1910
gelatin silver print
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

George Hendrik Breitner
Cyclist on the Prinsengracht, Amsterdam
ca. 1890-1910
gelatin silver print
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

George Hendrik Breitner
Portrait of girl with flowers
ca. 1886-1910
gelatin silver print
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

George Hendrik Breitner
Portrait of William Witsen
ca. 1890-1910
gelatin silver print
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

George Hendrik Breitner
Portrait of Margaretha Breitner
ca. 1890-1910
gelatin silver print
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

George Hendrik Breitner
Portrait of a woman
ca. 1890-1910
gelatin silver print
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

George Hendrik Breitner
Reclining nude - Marie Jordan Breitner
ca. 1888
photographic print
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

George Hendrik  Breitner
Marie Jordan Breitner playing with kitten
ca. 1890
photographic print
Rijksmuseum,  Amsterdam