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| Eugène Bléry Trunk of Beech Tree, Fontainebleau 1845 etching Indianapolis Museum of Art |
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| Théodore Rousseau In the Forest of Fontainebleau ca. 1850 drawing Art Institute of Chicago |
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| Gustave Le Gray Study of an Oak Tree, Forest of Fontainebleau 1852 salted paper print Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
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| Eugène Cuvelier Tree Study, Fontainebleau 1860 albumen print National Gallery of Art, Washington DC |
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| attributed to Eugène Cuvelier Forest Landscape ca. 1860-70 albumen print Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| René-Ernest Huet Fir Tree, Fôret des Landes, Aquitaine 1909 drawing Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Nicolas Poussin Path leading into a Forest Clearing ca. 1635-40 drawing Getty Museum, Los Angeles |
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| Eugène Cicéri Pine Tree in a Forest 1865 drawing Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| follower of Gillis van Coninxloo Forest Scene ca. 1595-1610 gouache on black paper Getty Museum, Los Angeles |
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| Frank Duveneck Beech Woods at Polling, Bavaria ca. 1878 oil on canvas Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio |
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| Francis Hopkinson Smith In the Woods 1877 watercolor Brooklyn Museum |
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| Adam Pynacker Study of Trees in a Wood before 1673 drawing Teylers Museum, Haarlem |
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| Charles Reginald Aston Trees on a Hill in a Wooded Landscape ca. 1880 watercolor Yale Center for British Art |
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| attributed to Asher Brown Durand Forest Trees before 1886 drawing Yale University Art Gallery |
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| Andrew MacCullum Study of Beeches at Epping 1858 watercolor Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
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| David Cox Sherwood Forest before 1859 drawing British Museum |
from Field and Forest
When you look down from the airplane you see lines,
Roads, ruts, braided into a net or web –
Where people go, what people do: the ways of life.
Heaven says to the farmer: "What's your field?"
And he answers: "Farming," with a field,
Or: "Dairy-farming," with a herd of cows.
They seem a boy's toy cows, seen from this high.
Seen from this high,
The fields have a terrible monotony.
But between the lighter patches there are dark ones.
A farmer is separated from a farmer
By what farmers have in common: forests,
Those dark things – what the fields were to begin with.
At night a fox comes out of the forest, eats his chickens.
At night the deer come out of the forest, eat his crops.
If he could he'd make farm out of all the forest,
But it isn't worth it: some of it's marsh, some rocks,
But it isn't worth it: some of it's marsh, some rocks,
There are things there you couldn't get rid of
With a bulldozer, even – not with dynamite.
Besides, he likes it. He had a cave there, as a boy;
He hunts there now. It's a waste of land,
But it would be a waste of time, a waste of money,
To make it into anything but what it is.
– Randall Jarrell (1962)