Pine Tree
Giovanni Segantini (Italian, 1858–1899)
c. 1897
- Medium
- oil on canvas
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- Framed: 149.5 x 84.8 x 4.1 cm (58 7/8 x 33 3/8 x 1 5/8 in.); Unframed: 135.2 x 72 cm (53 1/4 x 28 3/8 in.)
- Culture
- Italy, 19th century
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Modern European Painting and Sculpture
- Credit line
- Mr. and Mrs. William H. Marlatt Fund
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Little Ones profiles and older: it shows gentle subjects for the very young. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
Segantini painted this view of a pine tree in the Swiss Alps with his distinctive combination of brilliant colors applied in small, broken strokes. Rather than a direct transcription of nature, the extreme close-up view and the flat, decorative space are designed to arouse an emotional response. Finding spiritual consolation in the lush forests and clear light around his home in the Alps, Segantini wrote: “I am now working passionately to wrest the secret of Nature’s spirit from her. Nature utters the eternal word to the artist: love, love; and the earth sings life in spring, and the soul of things reawakens.”
