THE TREE OF VEINS II, 1941
Watercolour. 9 x 7in. (23.1 x 18.2cm.)
Inscribed on the reverse with the title and ‘Diagrams of Love.
Provenance
National Trust bequest.
Tate Gallery Archive: TGA 929/4/17/2.
The tree roots in this work clearly take the form of phallus and testicles. The number of branches with their terminating hearts have been reduced from thirteen to ten.
Thirteen and ten are both significant numbers to the Qabalist. Thirteen, by gematria, symbolises the unity of all creation, and ten is the number of Sephiroth in the Tree of Life.
The heart is a powerful symbol of life, the phallus is a powerful symbol of procreation and a tree symbolises growth. As usual in Colquhoun’s work of this period, the colours yellow, red and blue are used to signify creation and the female and male principles.
These are images of fertilisation, of penetration of the ovum, of the process of creation and growth. Each heart in the veinous network pulsates with the life given to it by the male generative force.
Other possible references include Leonardo da Vinci, who, in the 1490s, wrote poetically of the vessels that contain the blood as ‘a tree of veins’. The title may also refer to the alchemists’ idea of growing an ‘alchemical tree’ within an hermetically sealed flask. In some schools of thought, this links the alchemical tree with the Qabalistic Tree of Life. Colquhoun’s cousin Edward Garstin visited the alchemist Archibald Cockren at his laboratory and observed his sealed glass vessel within which a form was developing which ‘had branches like a tree’.
See note to Diagrams of Love (1940).