We tend to think of the beauty of trees as being bound up with their leaves, especially the gorgeous colors of autumn. We’re now in the season of bare branches, which have their own beauty.
“Ages may have passed before man gained sufficient mental stature to pay admiring tribute to the tree standing in all the glory of its full leafage, shimmering in the sunlight, making its myriad bows to the restless winds; but eons must have lapsed before the human eye grew keen enough and the human soul large enough to give sympathetic comprehension to the beauty of bare branches laced across changing skies, which is the tree-lover’s full heritage.
In winter, we are prone to regard our trees as cold, bare, and dreary; and we bid them wait until they are again clothed in verdure before we may accord to them comradeship. However, it is during this winter resting time that the tree stands revealed to the uttermost, ready to give its most intimate confidences to those who love it. It is indeed a superficial acquaintance that depends upon the garb worn for half the year; and to those who know them, the trees display even more individuality in the winter than in the summer. The summer is the tree’s period of reticence, when, behind its mysterious veil of green, it is so busy with its own life processes that it has no time for confidences, and may only now and then fling us a friendly greeting.”
Trees At Leisure, Amanda Botsford Comstock, 1916
Today I share two prints created 60 years apart, emphasizing the beauty of bare branched trees in winter.
1991-V, Grietje Postma (Color reduction woodcut, 1991) and Winter Moon at Toyomogahara, Kawase Hasui (Woodcut, 1931)
