The W G Hoskins Lecture 2016

‘Trees and Topography: Depictions of individual trees in the 18th and 19th centuries’ presented by Professor Charles Watkins.

The twenty-seventh Hoskins lecture

27 June 2016

As a young geographer in 1973, Charles was given a copy of Hoskins, The Making of the English Landscape by his tutor and was immediately bowled over. As his career and interests have progressed through geography to historical geography, Making remains influential. He also has a practical interest in woodland management, as he owns a wood in Herefordshire.

He began by apologising for beginning his lecture with pictures of Italian, rather than English, trees, but went on to explain the influence of Italian masters on British artists. From Roman times onwards some artists havedepicted realistic trees whose species can be identified, while others have represented a more generic ‘tree’. In many studies of the trees themselves – or representations of their symbolic meaning (France and Germany, along with England, claim the oak as ‘their’ tree, reflecting the strength and vigour of their peoples). Some paintings give information about historic woodland management, albeit incidentally. He gave examples of a drawing of 1503 by Augustin Hirschvogel showing pollarded willows around a pond outside a town. A Painting by Pieter Brueghel the younger of c.1620 shows two peasants binding faggots, while another small figure in the background is up a ladder, lopping branches from a tree. Although probably with an allegorical meaning, the painting accurately shows the work involved.

Then he showed two beautiful studies by Albrecht Dürer of a spruce and of pine trees, before going on to discuss work by Jacob van Ruisdael. One of his paintings shows a sloping tree, a willow, beside a plank fence. This motif of the sloping willow was commonly used. Many of Rusidael’s works were widely circulated as etchings and Constable acknowledged the influence of his painting Marsh with Travellers on his own art. Gainsborough, too, said that he had been fascinated by trees since childhood. His Landscape with a decayed willow over a pool is a good example of artists’ fascination with decayed trees – perhaps as a symbol for the transitory nature of life, perhaps as it gave the opportunity to emphasise the structure without having to do the fiddly leaves!

He ended with a discussion of John Everett Millais’s The Woodman’s Daughter (1851), inspired by the poem by Coventry Patmore. It was painted at Marley Wood, Oxford, and is an immensely detailed and accurate depiction of people, clothing and plants – but what is the woodcutter doing in the wood in spring? Never take anything at face value!

Sylvia Pinches gave the vote of thanks and then everyone went back to Salisbury Road for the customary tea and book sale.