A tree named once

The record dates Mulberry Tree to 1889. The mulberry is named in one title out of 610, while trees in general are named in forty-six, of which sixteen are dated 1889 and sixteen dated 1888. The general noun is everywhere in the last three years; the particular species almost never appears.

What the record gives

The canvas measures 54 by 65 centimetres and is held by the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, one of three works there in this catalogue, dated 1885, 1888 and 1889. The measured palette reads as ochre and yellow.

Ochre, level with its peak

Ochre dominates twenty-one of the 116 works dated 1889, matching 1887's twenty-one as the family's highest count in any single year. Since no works dated 1883 and no dated 1884 return it at all, the family goes from complete absence to its maximum between 1884 and 1889. Sequences like that are the reason this site sorts by period; the same works sorted by subject would put this tree beside orchards from three different years and make the movement invisible. Nothing about the site of the tree is recorded, so nothing is said.