Lot Essay
The Three Trees is the most celebrated printed depiction of landscape and weather in the history of art. The coincidental human element included in the foreground, the lover's to the right and the fisherman and his wife to the left, the horse and cart on the ridge beyond and the workers in the field appear dwarfed by the forces of nature.
The plate is worked with a variety of techniques to describe different climatic effects, the strident diagonal drypoint lines at the top left, for example, show the force of the whipping rain through the burr which they contain. They presage in their power the elemental strength of similar lines used in Christ Crucified between Two Thieves (B. 78) (see Lot 26)
This impression is closely comparable to that in The Metropolitan Museum of Art which is also printed on paper with a Foolscap watermark. Both show burr coming down from the right edge which is often absent in other, perhaps slightly later impressions, printed on a batch of paper bearing a different watermark.
The plate is worked with a variety of techniques to describe different climatic effects, the strident diagonal drypoint lines at the top left, for example, show the force of the whipping rain through the burr which they contain. They presage in their power the elemental strength of similar lines used in Christ Crucified between Two Thieves (B. 78) (see Lot 26)
This impression is closely comparable to that in The Metropolitan Museum of Art which is also printed on paper with a Foolscap watermark. Both show burr coming down from the right edge which is often absent in other, perhaps slightly later impressions, printed on a batch of paper bearing a different watermark.