PROFESSOR CHRISTIANA PAYNE
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Trees IN 19th-century British AND AMERICAN art

The role of trees in landscape painting, c. 1760-1870

TREES IN THE NATIONAL GALLERY 3: 18TH CENTURY

8/1/2018

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Picture
This famous couple, Mr and Mrs Robert Andrews (painted by Thomas Gainsborough, c. 1748) are showing off their fine clothes, up-to-date land management, and (in Robert's case) sporting prowess (Mrs A may be meant to have a dead pheasant on her lap). The oak tree behind them would have been useful for the Royal Navy - but the Andrewses never harvested it, and it still survives today as the 'Auberies Oak'. It probably signifies the longevity of a family that owns the same estate over many generations.

The younger oaks to the right hint at a 'family tree' and the children they might expect to have.

​In Room 35, there are several portraits of landowners, and just about all of them are shown against oak trees.
Picture
George Stubbs painted the Melbourne and Milbanke Families, c. 1769, against a very ancient oak. The painting records the marriage of Elizabeth Milbanke (extreme left) to Peniston Lamb, 1st Viscount Melbourne. (extreme right). Between the couple are Elizabeth's father and brother. 

Looking at the painting, you might assume that the Milbankes had this oak on their land - therefore they must have been there for many generations. But Stubbs used the same tree in a portrait of the Pocklington family! So did he have a drawing of an actual tree that he had seen, and use it as a kind of studio prop?

This tree could be several hundred years old. It fits beautifully into the composition, sheltering and embracing the family and its newest member.
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    Author

    From c. 2010-2017, I was engaged in research for a book on trees in British art, asking questions, such as: how does the interest in trees develop, how do ideas change over the 18th and 19th centuries? I looked at drawing manuals, illustrated books on trees, oil paintings, watercolours and prints, landscape gardening, poetry, artists' writings. The artists I found most important and/or interesting included the following: Paul Sandby, Thomas Hearne, John Constable, Samuel Palmer, James Ward, John Martin, Edward Lear, Francis Danby, Jacob George Strutt and Henry William Burgess.

    The book has now been published by Sansom and Company and its title is "Silent Witnesses: Trees in British Art, 1760-1870".

    My next research project is taking a look across the Atlantic and at the role of trees in American painting of c. 1800-1870. I'm getting to know new trees - hemlocks, red oaks, white pines - and new artists - Thomas Cole, Asher Brown Durand, Frederic Church, Worthington Whittredge, William Trost Richards. 

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