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Escher's palm trees
21 July 2018

Escher's palm trees

It is a tropical summer in the Netherlands and what could be more tropical than a palm tree? Certainly, Maurits Cornelis Escher saw something very special in this iconic tree. He has never commented on it, but it is striking how often it recurs in his work. The first of these was created in July 1923—a stylised palm tree with fronds like parasols, hanging bunches of palm fruits, the scaly trunk and a halo that seems to surround the tree.

M.C. Escher, Palm Tree, woodcut, July 1923

M.C. Escher, Palm Tree, woodcut, July 1923

M.C. Escher, Study for Palm Tree, 17 May 1923

M.C. Escher, Study for Palm Tree, 17 May 1923

In March 1926 he used a very similar palm tree as the centre of his print The Sixth Day of Creation, which features Adam and Eve in Paradise. In 1931 he again produced a palm tree, as part of his Emblemata series, and in 1933 he created a fourth one.

M.C.  Escher, Palm, wood engraving in black and grey-green, printed from two blocks, February 1933

M.C. Escher, Palm, wood engraving in black and grey-green, printed from two blocks, February 1933

M.C. Escher, The Sixth Day of the Creation, woodcut, March 1926

M.C. Escher, The Sixth Day of the Creation, woodcut, March 1926

M.C. Escher, Palm Tree (VI Emblemata), woodcut, between March and June 1931

M.C. Escher, Palm Tree (VI Emblemata), woodcut, between March and June 1931

There are also a number of drawings and preliminary studies in which he practices with the tree. But besides the palm tree as a subject, the tree also features several times as a visual element in his graphic work. The tree pops up behind a house near Nunziata, it rises into the frame next to the house in Dusk (Rome), it adorns the boulevard in Calvi, Corsica and two are present in his famous print Up and Down. The emblem he created for restaurant Insulinde includes several small palm trees, and palm trees constitute a recognisable element in his beautiful fictional populated worlds in Double Planetoid and Tetrahedral Planetoid, which lends these planets an earthlike quality.

It is probable that it was the exotic character of the tree that appealed to him. There were hardly any palm trees in the Netherlands. Something similar happened with aloe, a fleshy plant with pointed leaves which was perhaps even more exotic. He depicted it several times too, like in Tropea, Pentedatillo and Belvedere. In the version from 1933, both plants are combined. Two aloe plants flank the palm tree, lending the print not only something of the wild and natural, but also something very symmetrical and stylised. Escher must have felt drawn to the palm tree’s symmetry.

M.C. Escher, House in the Lava near Nunziata, Sicily, lithograph, August 1936

M.C. Escher, House in the Lava near Nunziata, Sicily, lithograph, August 1936

Detail

Detail

M.C. Escher, Palm near Ravello, ink on paper, 2 April 1923

M.C. Escher, Palm near Ravello, ink on paper, 2 April 1923

Detail

Detail

M.C. Escher, Dusk (Rome), mezzotint (second state), May 1946

M.C. Escher, Dusk (Rome), mezzotint (second state), May 1946

M.C. Escher, Emblem for Restaurant Insulinde, The Hague, woodcut in reddish brown, April 1944

M.C. Escher, Emblem for Restaurant Insulinde, The Hague, woodcut in reddish brown, April 1944

M.C. Escher, Calvi (the Fishing Town [Seen] from the Citadel), Corsica, wood engraving, December 1933

M.C. Escher, Calvi (the Fishing Town [Seen] from the Citadel), Corsica, wood engraving, December 1933

Detail

Detail

M.C. Escher, Double Planetoid (Double Planet), wood engraving in green, dark blue, black and white, printed from four blocks, December 1949

M.C. Escher, Double Planetoid (Double Planet), wood engraving in green, dark blue, black and white, printed from four blocks, December 1949

Detail

Detail

M.C. Escher, Tetrahedral Planetoid (Tetrahedral Planet), woodcut in green and black, printed from two blocks, April 1954

M.C. Escher, Tetrahedral Planetoid (Tetrahedral Planet), woodcut in green and black, printed from two blocks, April 1954

Detail (rotated)

Detail (rotated)

M.C. Escher, Boven en onder, litho, juli 1947

M.C. Escher, Boven en onder, litho, juli 1947

Detail

Detail

Detail

Detail

In the summer of 1923, Maurits met Jetta Umiker in Ravello. After they parted each other’s company at the end of that summer and kept in touch by writing letters, they met again in Rome in the spring of 1924. These photos show them on the Gianicolo hill, on which there is a park overlooking the city. The couple is in love, but in these photos Maurits also appears to be paying close attention to the palm trees and aloe plants in the park. The melancholic Jetta poses for her future husband.

Jetta at Gianicolo, 2 February 1924

Jetta at Gianicolo, 2 February 1924

Jetta at Gianicolo, 17 March 1924

Jetta at Gianicolo, 17 March 1924

Erik Kersten

Erik Kersten

Editor

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More Escher today

A trip to France with Jan, 1950

A trip to France with Jan, 1950

On 17 July 1950, Maurits and his youngest son Jan (11 years old) left for Paris, the beginning of a French trip just like the one he had made as a child.
'One hour before arriving in Paris, Jan said: you have to let me know as soon as you see the Eiffel Tower. But in the end he saw it before I did.'
Eldest son Arthur had moved to Lausanne to study geology on the advice of uncle Beer. George had recently enlisted for military service. On this, Escher wrote:
'George has been doing his military service for two weeks now, much to our chagrin, after years of delaying his studies. This is lousy, because you never know whether such a boy will later find the energy to continue studying. [This fear proved to be unfounded.] So we are here with Jantje who, still in primary school, will not be leaving us any time soon. '
Circle Limit IV (Heaven and Hell)

Circle Limit IV (Heaven and Hell)

In July 1960 Escher completed the last of his four ‘circle limits’. He had struggled with it for a while, but it was a publication by the Canadian professor H.S.M. Coxeter that set him on the right path. He had met this professor at the University of Toronto in 1954, during the International Congress of Mathematicians. In the article, Coxeter described how a tessellation from the centre to the edge of a circle is increasingly reduced and the motifs come to lie infinitely close together. In 1957 Coxeter gave a lecture for the Royal Society of Canada and he asked Escher by letter if he could use a few of the graphic artist’s works in the lecture. Afterwards, Coxeter sent Escher a copy of his lecture (which had been published under the name Crystal Symmetry and its Generalizations), in which he also included the figure about which Escher would become so enthusiastic. Coxeter in turn based this figure on the work of the French mathematician Jules Henri Poincaré, who visualised this form of hyperbolic geometry in his Poincaré disc.
Gravity

Gravity

In June 1952 Escher created the lithograph Gravity, which due to its subject naturally fits within the series of planetoids and stars that he depicted between 1948 and 1954. His celestial bodies all appear to be set in the same science fiction world, which somehow seems unlikely to be a place where Escher would feel at home. The first wood engraving Stars (1948) seems deceptively simple, but Gravity, Double Planetoid (1948) and Tetrahedral Planetoid (1954) are a lot more complex. These planetoids look as if they might be inhabited by civilisations somewhat like our own. The planetoid featured in Gravity is a small stellated dodecahedron. Its body has twelve five-pointed stars which are each occupied by a pyramid. Escher loved this spatial figure because it's simple and complex at the same time.