The Heroic Oak and the Lyrical Birch: Depictions of Trees

Župančič’s poem, which gives the exhibition its title, addresses the contrast between the female and the male principles. Even in itself it suggests the conceptual duality of the heroic image in a lyrical poetic form and mood. This implies that the notion of the lyrical is something changeable. While the oppositional use of the epic and the lyrical may seem self-evident, it does not work when we wish to apply it in concrete cases, particularly over a span of several centuries. Aristotle based his Poetics on the notion of mimesis – the imitation of nature – and only included lyric poetry indirectly in his hierarchical list of the principal genres of epic poetry, tragedy and comedy. According to his theory, the lyric has a purely ornamental function. It is a kind of inessential addition in a tragedy, which also uses music and singing. When these notions are transferred to fine art, it is the historical painting that corresponds to epic poetry, while in past centuries lyricism was regarded as one of its inessential components or a characteristic of minor genres. 

Within the antonymous pair heroic landscape–idyllic (or pastoral) landscape, the heroic landscape is, together with architecture, a setting for epic scenes – mythological and historical events – and accompanies depictions of actions, of action in progress. The pastoral landscape, on the other hand, is divorced from narrative content. The figures, animals and ruins in it are an integral part of a timeless, eternal and unchanging world and are, at the most, signifiers of the transience of Man and his works. Both landscapes are ideal, imaginary landscapes, but the essential difference between them is in their function and – consequently – the way they address us, which is adapted to their function. Jacob Pynas uses the landscape to dramatise the action in the foreground by using an intense palette, sharp light and contrasting shadows. The broken tree trunk is even a symbolic suggestion of a moment of crux – Christ’s farewell, in which he charges the first of his disciples to continue the work he has begun. 

The heroic oaks, ashes and beeches in the works of Jacob van Ruisdael had their origin in field studies by Dutch painters in previous decades, in which trees became unambiguously identifiable. We could almost call them tree portraits, a new genre of painting in which it is impossible to draw a clear dividing line between scientific interest and symbolic associations. In botany, it was not until the second half of the twentieth century (!) that a typology was developed for the classification of trees according to their growth shape. This is something that visual art was already capable of more than three centuries earlier, thanks to observation and the study of the natural environment. In the case of Jacob van Ruisdael, it is generally possible to identify the trees in his paintings in taxonomic terms, at least at the level of genus, if not species. 

In Baroque painting, trees frequently played the part of guardians of human dwellings or of travellers. Although less recognisably unique, they retained their heroic dimension. Life goes on in the safe shade of their spreading branches and can end just as suddenly as it begins. The immensity and indifference of the landscape, in which mighty trees tower over placid human dwellings and the trivial doings of their inhabitants, establishes a relationship between the eternity of creation and the coincidental and episodic nature of man’s harmonious coexistence with nature. 

Pernhart’s storm shows a change in the understanding of lyricism, if we compare it to the contrasting image in Karinger’s painting Oak Trees in Mestni Log. The harmoniousness of the pallet and the soft light in the latter picture remind us of that timeless tranquillity we were able to perceive in Giuseppe Zola’s idyllic image. Karinger’s oaks are organised according to the principle of the Romantic fragment, although they continue the pastoral tradition in painting that was adopted by the Realists of the Barbizon school, who then passed it on to the Impressionists in the 1860s. 

If the Romantic movement turned the value system of genres based on Aristotle’s Poetics on its head, the Realism of the Barbizon school in the mid-nineteenth century led to a change in understanding of the painted image. The imitation of nature was replaced by the research and study of natural phenomena – directly, from a model, en plein air. Paintings are no longer seen as an illusionistic recreation of the world but as its equivalent. The painter no longer creates an illusion of the ideal world but a persuasive image of the seen world. The painter’s skill derives from recognising and understanding the essence of natural phenomena and discovering ways to depict them convincingly. This opens up an opportunity for the artist’s presence to enter the image more directly, revealing itself in the gradual emancipation of brushwork.

Courbet’s oak is as much an oak as it is a piece of painted canvas. He does not hide the latter but instead the visible brushstrokes are arranged into a convincing image of a tree charged with metonymic significance. The connection with Gallic history reveals the painter’s intention to heroify the tree, something he achieves through the use of the convention of the portrait and the relationship between the tree and the landscape and in relation to the other trees. Jurij Šubic, on the other hand, was drawn to an apple orchard at the onset of autumn in a melancholy light that mingles with a partly cloudy sky over a group of trees. Here too the composition, the trace of the brush and its rhythm are a significant part of the aesthetic effect. The aesthetic expression of the painting is no longer carried by the attempt to describe details in a convincing illusion, but by the suggestiveness of the painter’s brushwork. A similar contribution to the harmonious mood is made by the character of the apple trees, which remain recognisable despite our awareness of the means employed by the artist. We can justifiably describe the painting as a lyrical image of an emotional experience of the subject which the painter communicates to the viewer.

Impressionism thoroughly explored the limits of the visual shortcuts to which brushwork could be pushed while still retaining its referential effectiveness. In central European landscape painting, Neo-Romantic tendencies led to a revival of the concept of the lyricism of nature (Naturlyrismus), in which context we also find numerous images of trees of various kinds. The mental image of the apple tree in blossom became a kind of symbol of the rebirth of fine art in the centres of Mitteleuropa, particularly Vienna. We find numerous correspondences in Berthold’s photography and Grohar’s painting which add up to an emphatically lyrical effect of the image. The soft undulation of the landscape in Grohar’s Spring is complemented by the soft shape of the young apple tree. Through its slender branches a view opens of the landscape. Fragmented and disordered touches of the paintbrush and palette knife soften the contours of the forms, with the result that they are absorbed into the undulation of fields, hill and sky. The coarse graininess of the gum bichromate process in Berthold’s photograph has a similar function. The vanishing point on the left and the soft transition of the dark form of the bushes through the branches of the tree into the sky create a mood of emotional excitement and empathy with the rebirth of natural energies.

Matija Jama’s Willows captures a group of trees in a distinctly lyrical image. A row of willows planted along an overgrown ditch thrust yearningly towards the sky, their trunks leaning in different directions and their branches bare. Anchored on the bank, which is partly covered by snow, they extend their branches towards the sun. Although Jama consistently maintained an intellectual distance in his focus on the effects of specific daylight, he was unable to paint emotional factors out of the image.

Jakopič’s birches, however, reveal to us a new aspect of lyricism that can perhaps best be demonstrated by his depictions of these trees from the first years of the twentieth century. We can place them in a row, where the chronological sequence seems to pass from tonal solutions to a more intense use of colours. The birches exhibited at the Salon Miethke in Vienna in 1903, which were given an original, custom-made frame, may still be understood in the context of the realistic paradigm of equivalences, only that the part played by drawing is significantly less marked, rather as it is in Poplars in the Morning Sun. The large version, possibly painted as a study for the similarly sized painting today in the National Museum in Belgrade, is enigmatic in its own way. The fauvistically expanded palette and emancipated brushwork move the study and the aspect of lyricism to the artist’s side. Such an intense expression of subjectivity and, at the same time, emotional experience convinces the viewer that they are witnessing the creative process and reliving the intensity of inner emotional turmoil together with the artist. This aspect of lyricism became very important in the art of the twentieth century, beginning with Wassily Kandinsky, who in 1911 painted a canvas entitled Lyrical. This is still a landscape image with a stylised horseman, but with a dynamic form that echoes the animistic images of yearning trees –Jama’s willows, Jakopič’s solitary birch or his poplars in the morning sun, Berthold’s birch wood or his apple tree in blossom. In the middle of the century we encounter the notion of “lyrical abstraction”, which is based on an associative connection with the landscape, while the principal means of expression is the brushstroke, or even less − the trace of a gesture.

And what of the heroic oak? If we look at Grohar’s Larch, we see a tree that could undoubtedly be described as heroic, and the larch as a species certainly conforms to the notions of magnificence, solidity and endurance. The painter’s signature – unique and never repeated – is a clear sign that he wished it to function as a depiction of a name carved into the bark of the tree. This is Grohar himself, his symbolic self-portrait and his simultaneous presence in the execution of the painting with long combed strokes that make up the view of the shimmering Alpine valley with rocky peaks in the distance. Lyricism imbues a form which we once encountered in heroic, dramatic images of, in particular, oaks. Over the centuries, the heroic oak has given way to the lyrical birch – not because of any intrinsic properties but for reasons of cultural suitability. In the dynamic relationship of the lyrical and the epic (heroic), the epic (heroic) has taken on a subordinate role in Župančič’s poem and acquired an ornamental character.