Standing TALL

Artists finding inspiration in trees is rooted in history

- JOHN O'HERN

On September 11, 1777, British forces led by William Howe defeated the Continental Army led by George Washington at the Battle of Brandywine at Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. The retreat of American troops was led in part by the Marquis de Lafayette, a 20-year-old French nobleman who had come to America to serve in the Revolution. Lafayette was wounded in the battle and is said to have rested under a sycamore tree on the farm of Gideon Gilpin, a tree that may have been over 50 years old at the time.

Today, the “Lafayette Sycamore” stands proudly at 109 feet tall and 23 feet around next to the Gideon Gilpin House in Chadds Ford. British soldiers had plundered Gilpin’s property and he had to open a tavern there to support his family. The tree has attracted artists for generations.

When he was a boy, Tim Barr was captivated by N. C. Wyeth’s 1920 painting, Buttonwood Farm. (Fine-grained sycamore wood was often used to make buttons.) Later, his son Andrew Wyeth painted the same subject. When Barr eventually saw the tree, intrigued by its shape, he said, “I’ve got to do this tree.” And that he did. Many times—each time learning something more about the tree and each time perfecting his painting technique a little more. “I was always climbing huge trees as a kid,” Barr says. “The monumental size of the creature is jaw dropping and awe inspiring when you stand below its overstory. Paintings can only attempt at capturing that aspect of the tree. I’ll keep trying.”