Artwork Information

This painting has become a symbol of nationalist subject matter, and it had an immediate effect on many local artists when it was first shown at Wellington and Christchurch.

The ‘skeleton’ of an indigenous tree, perhaps a burnt totara, is silhouetted against a backcountry landscape with a threatening pall of smoke placed in the distance.

Dr E.H. McCormick noted in his 1957 inaugural Friend’s lecture: ‘In my childhood charred trees strewed the paddocks beyond the town or reared in grotesques shapes on the skyline.’ (Golden, 2004)