Tree

Maker

(artist)
1885-1963

Title

Tree

Date of Production

(circa) 1913

Medium

graphite, black ink and watercolour on wove paper, with multiple pinholes at all four corners and upper and lower centre edges.

Dimensions

Height: 35.3 cm
Width: 25.4 cm

Accession Number

D.2016.XX.8

Mode of Acquisition

Brigid Peppin, gift, 2016

Credit

The Courtauld, London (Samuel Courtauld Trust)

Copyright

Location

Not currently on display

Keywords

Label Text

Made around the same time as Canal (D.2016.XX.7), this drawing shows Saunders applying the techniques of simplification and abstraction to a single motif. The tree’s foliage is composed of discrete blocks of colour and the trunk and branches are rendered as a tube sprouting spiky limbs. Saunders’s strikingly unconventional treatment of this seemingly ordinary subject shows parallels with paintings by artists such as Henri Matisse (1869-1954) and Henri Rousseau (1844-1910), revealing her awareness of contemporary art in France.

Provenance

with the artist until her death in 1963; bequeathed to her sister, Ethel Saunders; bequeathed to her first cousin once removed, Helen Peppin, 1971; given to her daughter, Brigid Peppin, 1989; offered by her as a gift and part-purchase to the Samuel Courtauld Trust, 2016

Exhibition History

Drawings Gallery Display - Helen Saunders, The Courtauld Gallery, London, 14/10/2022-29/01/2023

Helen Saunders (1885-1963), Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 09/01/1996-03/03/1996; Graves Art Gallery, Sheffield, 16/03/1996-20/04/1996

Literature

Peppin, Brigid, and Cork, Richard, Helen Saunders (1885-1963), exh. cat., Ashmolean Museum, Oxford and Graves Art Gallery ,Sheffield, 1996
p. 43

Inscriptions

Watermark: Watermark: none.

Inscription: Verso: upper right, graphite: "3".

Collector's mark: none.

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