Description
The Oak Tree and the Reed illustrates the fable of the same name by the 17th-century French writer Jean de La Fontaine (1621-1695). Having disdainfully pitied the reed for bending before the wind, the oak is shown torn from the earth by a terrific north wind. Focusing upon the uprooted oak, Daubigny created a violently expressive treatment of the subject. The bold dappling of lights and darks below is set off by the intense blue of the clouds encroaching upon the land from the left. The diagonal streaks of thin-ly applied gray wash above suggest driving rain.
Provenance
Hector Giacomelli [1822-1904, L. 1311], Versailles (Probably c. 1873-1904); (Hotel Drouot, H. Giacomelli collection sale, Paris, April 13-15, 1905, no. 71, sold to Giacomelli) (1905); Giacomelli (1905-?); François Gosselin, Paris, sold to Shepherd Gallery, New York (?-1976); (Shepherd Gallery, New York, sold to Muriel Butkin, Shaker Heights, OH) (1976); Muriel Butkin [1916-2008], Cleveland, OH, by bequest to the Cleveland Museum of Art, Shaker Heights, OH (1976-2008); The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (2008-)
Accession Number
2008.357
Medium
blue, gray, and black wash, and graphite
Dimensions
Sheet: 29.3 x 23 cm (11 9/16 x 9 1/16 in.)
Classification
Drawing
Credit Line
Bequest of Muriel Butkin
Tags
Drawing Impressionist & Modern (1851–1900) Graphite & Pencil French
Background & Context
Background Story
This drawing takes its title from Aesop's fable of the oak and the reed: the mighty oak is toppled by the wind while the humble reed bends and survives. Daubigny's interpretation in wash and graphite is a landscape meditation on the fable rather than a literal illustration. The composition contrasts a massive oak — solid, vertical, imperious — with the flexible reeds along the waterline that sway with every breeze. The medium of wash is perfectly suited to the subject: the oak is rendered in dense, dark strokes while the reeds dissolve into the paper's white ground.
Cultural Impact
The Oak Tree and the Reed connects Daubigny to a tradition of literary landscape that runs from Claude Lorrain through the Barbizon painters. But where Claude painted classical landscapes as settings for mythological narratives, Daubigny uses the literary subject as a starting point for a landscape that is primarily about atmosphere and vegetal character. The fable provides the structure; the landscape provides the meaning.
Why It Matters
This drawing is Daubigny at his most reflective. The fable of the oak and the reed — flexibility versus rigidity — could stand as a motto for the Barbizon School itself, which bent Romanticism into naturalism rather than standing rigid against it.
