THE THREE TREES

 CHARLES E. BURCHFIELD

The Three Trees, 1932-46, watercolor on paper, 36" x 60"

JOURNALS: May 2, 1949

In Salem-High Street-great open fields with gigantic trees, elms, buttonwoods and maples, with blue-jays flying about - 

Burchfield notes often in his journals that he was "near the Three Trees, sketching...

...when he heard that two of the trees had been felled by a tornado in 1925 he "was seized with a desire to recreate them in a picture".

The Three Trees (Salem, Ohio), Pen and Ink with wash over graphite

Collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art

I really appreciate the continuous line that connects the three trees along the top of the "spreading branch canopy". It is such a direct way to express that things in nature are interconnected and also creates a movement, like a wave, or maybe a ripple of wind ruffling the leaves in a certain direction.

The way he drew in the sun embraced by the lower branches of the two trees on the left with clouds and rays of sunshine lighting up the landscape in the distance gives a context to the trees.

Chestnut Trees, (Near Little Beaver Creek, east of Salem, Ohio), 1920

Pen and ink wash & pencil

"Three chestnut trees, overlooking the valley of the Little Beaver. What glorious trees these vanished chestnuts were - with their shaggy deeply sculptured trunks, and waxy green luxuriant foliage, now truly myths of a bygone era."

Chestnut Trees, 1916, Gouache, watercolor and pencil on paper

FRAGONARD'S DRAWINGS OF TREES

 JEAN HONORÉ FRAGONARD

Foliage Study: Branches of a Chestnut Tree 1765

In October of 2016 we saw a show of Fragonard's landscape drawings at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. I took many photos of his drawings of trees. He was such a master of observational drawing. About this drawing of a Chestnut: "This sheet records the branches of a Chestnut Tree heavy with leaves and nuts. The study was likely inspired by the instruction of Charles Joseph Natoire, director of the Académie de France in Rome, who emphasized the importance of directly observing nature. In Fragonard's studies of individual trees or masses of foliage he was less interested in rendering botanical accuracy than in capturing the effects of light and the textures of leaves with stylized strokes of red chalk." chalk. https://metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/655390

The simplicity of this sketch says it all. The light on the trees, the lines delineating the contour of clumps of leaves or the masses of the foliage and the big shape of the tree. Those gestural dark lines that are branches.

WHY DRAW A TREE

This post is the first in a series titled WHY DRAW A TREE. It is something that I have been thinking about for awhile and because I will be teaching two weekend classes in June where we will be drawing trees I have decided to do it now. The posts will feature work by artists, living and deceased, who have inspired my own drawings and paintings of trees over the past thirty years. I will focus on drawings in black and white but also include paintings. 

CYPRESSES, 1889, SAINT-REMY-DE-PROVENCE, FRANCE

VINCENT VAN GOGH

CYPRESSES, POLLARDED TREES, AND ROOTS

From 1888 to 1890 Van Gogh found solace or perhaps an identification with cypress trees. The cypress tree is a symbol of death and perhaps this was a reflection of his state of mind right before his own death in 1890. Regardless, these late drawings and paintings of the cypress tree are full of the life that all his work expresses with his variety of swirling lines animating the tree and the landscape surrounding it.  He was also very aware of the challenges of painting the landscape and in a letter to his brother Theo he wrote "-(The cypress) is the dark patch in a sun-drenched landscape, but it's one of the most difficult to hit off exactly that I can imagine."

POLLARD BIRCHES, 1884

pencil, pen and ink watercolor on paper

LANDSCAPE WITH PATH AND POLLARD BIRCHES, 1888

Pollarding trees is a common practice in much of Europe including his native Netherlands. He compared a row of pollarded trees to a "procession of orphan men". The Dutch writer Cees Nooteboom in his book Roads to Santiago, compares them to "...armies naked and unmoving, lined up as if for battle, marching into your dreams at night." The way their gnarled trunks lean into space give the feeling that they will uproot themselves and start walking into the landscape. Van Gogh loved these trees and they featured prominently in his drawings and paintings. 

TWO TREES

PINES ALONG A ROAD TO A HOUSE 

I love the gestural quality of these two drawings. It is as if you can feel the wind moving through the branches. The use of a few lines is enough to depict the ground the trees are growing in. 

TREE ROOTS, JULY 1890, AUVERS-SUR-OISE, FRANCE

This painting Tree Roots is thought to be the last piece he worked on the day he suffered a fatal gunshot wound. Van Gogh also made a drawing of tree roots when he lived in The Hague in 1882. In a letter to his brother Theo he wrote that he wanted it to "express something of life's struggle" and looking at it as "Frantically and fervently rooting itself, as it were, in the earth, and yet being half torn up by the storm."

"DRAWING IS AT THE ROOT OF EVERYTHING"

VINCENT VAN GOGH