Rodney Galarneau Tree, Rochester, New York 1959 gelatin silver print Art Institute of Chicago |
George Kendall Warren Tree 1866 albumen print Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri |
Marinus Heijl Leafless Tree before 1931 drawing Teylers Museum, Haarlem |
O. Winston Link Train no. 17, The Birmingham Special, passes a Giant Oak, Max Meadows, Virginia 1957 gelatin silver print Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia |
James Ward A Stunted Oak 1822 drawing Yale Center for British Art |
attributed to Paulus Willemsz van Vianen Study of Gnarled Tree before 1613 drawing Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
Benjamin Brecknell Turner Eashing Bridge, Surrey ca. 1852-54 albumen print Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
Beatrix Potter Pollarded Willow 1882 watercolor Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
Eliot Porter Elephant Tree, Baja, Calif. 1966 dye transfer print Princeton University Art Museum |
Ilse Bing Tree 1955 gelatin silver print Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio |
Willem Roelofs Trees near a Pond, West Wickham, Kent 1871 drawing Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
Abraham Bloemaert Leafless Tree ca. 1590-1600 drawing Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
Charles-François Daubigny A Clump of Alder Trees 1862 etching Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio |
Caro Weir Ely Untitled before 1974 etching Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (Achenbach Foundation) |
Arthur Wesley Dow Tree in Winter ca. 1900 cyanotype Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
Jean-François Millet Two Trees ca. 1851-52 drawing (over earlier handwriting) Yale University Art Gallery |
Last night St. Ursula sent me her dianthus
out of her bedroom window, with her love –
living dianthus, and a single dried
living dianthus, and a single dried
sprig of her other window flower, vervain . . .
how many flowers are named in Genesis?
Good answer! Not one. Plenty of trees, however.
It was a poet planted flowerbeds
that Eden might be filled with tremulous,
frivolous petals – I dare say he was right,
they were made to be noticed! And to see
a poppy husk fall from a bursting flower
is to know something of the life to come
once the body has turned to dust & ashes,
even as our dying breath aspires
toward our Father's house . . . as for the trees,
what can we learn of noble constancy
more than we find in the pure laurel leaf,
so numerable, so sequent and serene?
– from Brantwood Senilia, a long poem by Paul Batchelor, heavily indebted to the writings and drawings of John Ruskin (1819-1900)