Blasted Tree

[Galerie René-François Teissèdre, Paris, as by Hummel; sold to Thaw]; Eugene V. Thaw, New York (until 2009)

Esther Bell. "Catalogue Raisonné of the Thaw Collection." Studying Nature: Oil Sketches from the Thaw Collection. Ed. Jennifer Tonkovich. New York, 2011, p. 130, no. 86, ill. (color), calls it "Blasted Tree".

In an undated note (Department of European Paintings files), Teissèdre (see Provenance) states that the tree depicted in this work also appears at the left of another, unidentified, painting executed on canvas.

The present work is not cited by Marsha Morton in "Johann Erdmann Hummel: A Painter of Biedermeier Berlin" (Ph.D. diss., Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, 1986). As pointed out by Morton, the painting is not included in "Johann Erdmann Hummel, 1769–1852: Sein Werk," the catalogue raisonné of the artist's work compiled by Georg Hummel in 1931, of which there is an unpublished typescript in the Berlin Kunstbibliothek (excerpts forwarded by Morton with email of October 13, 2015; Department of European Paintings files).

The view depicted in the present work is the subject of a painting signed by the Swedish artist Gustaf Wilhelm Palm and dated 1844, which was sold at Bukowski's, Stockholm, on May 24, 2005, no. 28, as "Vy från Trakten av Albano" (View near Albano).