Winter Tree
1901 to 1925
Image not available — this artwork is under copyright
View on museum website →Medium
intaglio
Classification
Department
CG-W
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Rosenwald Collection
Accession Number
1964.1.49
Art Historical Context
Peter Takal's *Winter Tree*, created sometime between 1901 and 1925, is a striking intaglio print that evokes the serene, skeletal beauty of a barren tree against a winter landscape. Housed in the National Gallery of Art's Department Modern Prints and Drawings (CG-W), work exemplifies early 20th-century printmaking, a period when artists increasingly turned to graphic media to explore nature's quiet drama and seasonal shifts. Intaglio techniques—such as etching or engraving—require incising lines into a metal plate, which holds ink in the grooves for deep, expressive impressions. This method ...
About the Artist
Peter Takal
Peter Takal (1905–1995) was a Romanian-born American artist renowned for his masterful pen-and-ink drawings and prints, which blended precise linear observation with surrealist undertones. Born on December 8, 1905, in Bucharest, Romania, Takal spent his early career in Europe, living and working in Berlin during the 1920s before moving to Paris in the 1930s, where he pursued acting alongside his a...