Wooded Landscape with a Pollarded Tree

Art Historical Context

Salomon Gessner’s 1764 etching “Wooded Landscape with a Pollarded Tree” presents a tranquil forest scene rendered with remarkable delicacy on laid paper tinted pale blue. The medium allows for fine, expressive lines that capture the textured foliage and the distinctive form of the pollarded tree—a tree pruned to encourage new growth—while the subtle blue tone lends the composition an atmospheric, almost luminous quality suggestive of filtered light or early morning mist. Created during the mid-eighteenth century, the print reflects the period’s growing appreciation for intimate, naturalistic ...

About the Artist

Salomon Gessner · 1730–1788

Salomon Gessner was born in Zurich in 1730 into a family of printers and publishers, an upbringing that placed books, images, and ideas at the center of his world from an early age. Though largely self-taught as a visual artist, he received some instruction during a period in Berlin, where he encountered the German Rococo tradition, and his mature work reflects a deep absorption in the pastoral li...