Description
Te raau rahi (The Big Tree) – the people are detail, the tree is the subject
A tree rises the whole height of the canvas: the pale grey trunk divides in the lower third, and the branches spread across the entire upper half of the picture, touching both edges. Behind it lies a dense green band of shrubs and trees, and above that a light, almost white sky. In the foreground stretches a broad grassy surface in green, yellow and pink. Tiny figures are scattered over it: two stand at the left by a red bush, one lies at the lower right, two more can barely be made out in the grass. At the lower left the title is painted onto the grass, at the lower right the signature. The work is held by the Art Institute of Chicago under the inventory number 1949.513, the year is 1891, and the support is, by the museum record, a coarse jute cloth.
Nobody has the leading part
There are at least five people in the picture, but none is bigger than a palm. None looks towards us, none stands in the middle, none does anything that could be called an event. The figures lie scattered over the grass like stones over a field, and the eye finds them only after it has already followed the trunk and the branches. It is this reversal of the usual order that gives the picture its calm.
What is on the canvas and what is in the record
At the lower left the title is painted in a pink-red script, at the lower right the signature with the year; both are clearly visible on the canvas. The museum record we were able to read leaves the inscriptions field empty for this work. So we state both: that the record notes no inscription, and that the inscription is on the picture. We do not correct the record and we do not pass over the painting.
The colours of the grass
The grass in front is not an even green. Yellow, pink and bluish fields alternate within it, lying side by side like patches. That is why the foreground is not empty although almost nothing stands in it, and why the tiny figures do not disappear but are held in those patches of colour.
How a hand-painted reproduction is made
Every reproduction here is hand-painted in oil on canvas, stroke by stroke. In this motif the tiny figures are the hardest part: made too strong, the picture turns into a scene with people in it, which is exactly what it is not.
- Subject: a big tree across the whole height, before it a grassy surface with tiny figures.
- Technique: oil, by the museum record on a coarse cloth.
- Sizes: landscape format, from 40 x 32 cm to 200 x 160 cm; 80 x 64 cm and 100 x 80 cm are often chosen.
- Of note: not one figure in the picture is bigger than a palm.
If the same period interests you, see also Arearea (Joyousness), Fatata te Miti (By the Sea) and Mahana no atua (Day of the God). The museum gives the measurement as height by width: 72.5 x 91.5 cm.
