Spirits of Trees

The title points to an animist register that surfaced repeatedly in Summers' later prints, where the natural world is treated less as scenery than as inhabited by presences. Spirits of Trees most likely renders a stand or grove as a set of tall vertical forms — trunks, perhaps, or anthropomorphised tree shapes — held against a contrasting ground. The composition would rely on his customary economy: a small number of large flat colour fields, a high horizon or none at all, and very little internal drawing within each shape. Summers' soft-edged halations, produced by spraying solvent through the back of the sheet so that pigment bleeds outward from each block's outline, work particularly well to suggest the dissolved, half-seen quality the title implies. The print belongs to the period in which his subject matter widened from named geography — Kali Gandaki, Tilicho Lake — toward more emblematic and mythic titles. It sits alongside his Indian narrative pieces and the late temple compositions as part of an output preoccupied less with documenting place than with rendering its felt or imagined inhabitants.