TREE ANATOMY, 1942
Oil on Board. 22¼x 11¼in. (56.9 x 29.0cm.)
Signed, inscribed with the title and dated 1942 on the reverse.
Provenance
Sotheby’s studio sale, 24th April 1985, lot 521.
Pruskin Gallery.
Private Collection.
Exhibited
London, The Leicester Galleries, 1942, No. 42.
Bradford, Cartwright Hall, 1943.
Newlyn, Newlyn Art Gallery, 1961, No.29.
Exeter, City of Exeter Art Gallery, 1972, No. 4.
London, Leva Gallery, 1974.
Penzance, Newlyn Orion Gallery, 1976, No. 10.
London, Parkin Gallery, 1977, No. 23.
London, Blond Fine Art, 1985, No. 40.
Canterbury, The Herbert Read Gallery, 1986, No. 79. Illustrated (upside
down) in colour in the catalogue.
Wolfsburg, Kunstmuseum, 2002-03.
Middlesbrough, Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art. 2008. Illustrated in
colour in the catalogue.
A dead branch has rotted from a tree trunk, leaving an area of decay that comprises a gaping key-hole shaped cavity. The cavity can also be read, with hardly any cooperation from the viewer’s imagination, as a woman’s genitalia.
Because the knot/vagina dominates the painting, taking up nearly all the picture space, the viewer is jolted by a change of scale in which s/he is transformed into a tiny creature experiencing the over life-size image as engulfing, cavernous and mysterious.
Sex is never far away in Colquhoun's work. Sometimes it is present in the sense of what we might nowadays call sexual politics. Sometimes it is present as a natural generative force, in particular a celebration of the female aspect. The fusion of the body with the landscape is a theme that occurs elsewhere in her work, not only in her paintings but also, perhaps more commonly, in her poetry. Tree Anatomy can be seen as an aspect of this. It can be related to myths concerning vegetation deities, dealt with in The Golden Bough - the work by James Fraser - with which she was familiar. The Golden Bough makes reference to men who attempted to fertilize trees in the way that came naturally to them. This image would certainly provide guidance for any uncertain or unimaginative rustic.
One is also reminded of the myth of Daphne, who was metamorphosed into a laurel bush by her father, a river god, in order to preserve her from the sexual predations of Apollo. What a bitter paradox if the only part of her to remain accessible was that which she most desired to protect! And, what a dereliction of paternal duty to leave his daughter so exposed and defenceless at her time of greatest need!
A drawing by Edith Rimmington, used as the cover of the single-issue Surrealist publication Fulcrum in 1944 shows a similar subject. In Rimmington’s drawing a tree trunk has bark and knot holes that take the forms of breasts and gaping vagina (not to mention a pair of scaly bird’s legs and talons that reach menacingly towards the vagina). Colquhoun practiced automatic writing and drawing with Edith Rimmington and Emmy Bridgewater. Some of these joint texts were published in Fulcrum. Was Rimmington familiar with Tree Anatomy?