Previously owned by László Urbach and Rózsi Urbach, who bought it from the artist firsthand.
The painting titled ‘Trees’ is one of Amrita Shergil’s many landscapes. Her signature on the canvas dates it to 1939, making it one of her later works, just two years before her death in 1941.
The trees cover the canvas like cracks on a window pane. Similar to another one of her paintings named 'View from the studio', which frames a similar tree. Identical in appearance, with a thin, narrow bark, entirely leafless, unlike the luscious green trees we often find in landscapes. As the cool tones wash over the canvas with a sense of melancholy, the viewer is left to wonder. Given her mixed heritage, Amrita Shergill had surely grappled with understanding her own cultural identity. For her early critiques, she was too Western to be an Indian artist; at the same time, not European enough to be labelled as one. In such a case, her landscapes, like this painting, provided a universality. It could be argued endlessly whether these trees were inspired by the one outside her studio in Paris or if they were the trees she had seen from her home in India. It is clear that this wasn’t just a realistic painting of a landscape she had witnessed. It feels modernist in nature. The trees themselves aren’t static; they bend with the wind, like we are watching the reflection of a forest on rippling water. But her true skill lies in how she made Trees, a subject that feels so common and mundane, still appear enticing. Proving that even without the human figures that she is often known for, Amrita Shergil still holds the ability to draw the viewer in with the simplest of landscapes.
In Trees (1939), Amrita Sher-Gil transforms an apparently ordinary landscape into an intimate study of solitude and psychological uncertainty. The slender, largely leafless trunks rise across the canvas like fractured lines, disrupting conventional landscape harmony. Their dark silhouettes contrast with the hazy blue-grey sky, while a restrained patch of yellow-green at the lower edge suggests a distant clearing and offers a subtle counterpoint to the prevailing melancholy. Loose, expressive brushwork dissolves the distinction between tree, atmosphere, and ground, lending the scene a sense of movement and instability.
Painted during Sher-Gil’s final Hungarian period, the work reflects her synthesis of European modernism and a deeply personal visual language. Its relationship to View from Studio (1934) reveals her sustained interest in bare trees as expressive forms. Rather than documenting nature, Trees becomes an inward landscape—an evocative meditation on displacement, identity, and the emotional complexity of belonging. Sotheby’s discussion, drawing on art historian Katalin Keserü, similarly interprets the painting as a reflection of Sher-Gil’s inner life.
