Image: High Museum of Art, Atlanta
The High Museum of Art in Atlanta has opened 'Paper Trees', an exhibition devoted to the difficulty and variety of depicting trees in American art. The show is now on view and examines how artists approached the subject over nearly a century, moving from outdoor practice sketches to finished works in multiple media. The museum frames the project as both a study of technique and a record of changing cultural attitudes toward the natural world.
The exhibition takes its cue from nineteenth-century drawing manual writer James Duffield Harding, who warned in 1850 that trees are among the most difficult artistic subjects because each root, trunk, branch, twig and leaf is distinct. The High uses that observation as the starting point for a presentation that focuses on how artists translated observation into image. According to the museum, 'Paper Trees' explores the artist’s way of seeing the natural world and how tree studies developed alongside early conservation thinking in the United States.
The High says the exhibition ranges from the late nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century, a period when approaches to landscape and nature shifted across schools of thought. Rather than treating trees only as subjects of scenery, the show emphasizes process, looking closely at the visual translation of form, texture and light. Works in the exhibition are presented across different media, underscoring the range of methods artists used to make the natural world legible on paper and canvas.
Among the artists highlighted are Ernest Haskell, Walter Ronald Locke, David C. Driskell, Bessie Harvey, Michelle Holzapfel, Joseph Stella and Alice Ravenel Huger Smith. The museum’s exhibition page also singles out William Thomas Livesay’s 'Large Oak Tree' from 1985, a High collection work shown as the exhibition’s featured image. Other works discussed on the page include Haskell’s 'The Oak and the Adobe' and Driskell’s 'Two Pines #2', both used to illustrate different approaches to the tree as subject, structure and symbol.
The High’s interpretive text points to Driskell’s long engagement with the pine tree, beginning with a residency at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 1953, and notes his efforts to capture what he described as moving beyond the known qualities of the tree to investigate its atmosphere. The exhibition also includes Bessie Harvey’s sculptural use of roots and wood, Michelle Holzapfel’s carved cherry burl vessel 'Restless Leaves Vase', and Joseph Stella’s 'Untitled (Tree Trunk)', which the museum identifies as likely depicting the American chestnut, a species endangered by blight.
According to the museum, 'Paper Trees' is organized by the High Museum of Art, Atlanta. The exhibition runs July 31, 2026, through February 21, 2027, and admission information listed on the museum site gives members and museum pass holders free entry, with tickets for not-yet-members priced at $23.50.
