The Lime Tree Is Docile (Le Tilleul est docile) from Natural History (Histoire naturelle)

The Lime Tree Is Docile (Le Tilleul est docile) from Natural History (Histoire naturelle) is a foundational work by Max Ernst, created circa 1925 and formally published in 1926. This piece is a powerful demonstration of Ernst’s revolutionary technique of frottage, a method of automatic drawing where pencil rubbings of textured surfaces are used as a starting point for generating spontaneous, hallucinatory imagery. This groundbreaking methodology was vital to the emergence of the French Surrealist movement, enabling the artist to bypass rational control by harnessing chance.

The print itself is one in a celebrated portfolio of 34 collotypes, collectively titled Histoire naturelle. Ernst, seeking to tap into the subconscious, used the frottage process to allow the random patterns of wood grain, wire mesh, or leaves to dictate the forms of his compositions. These textures are captured here with sharp precision through the photomechanical collotype printing process, ensuring the classification as a print maintains the stark contrast and graphic intensity of the original rubbings.

In The Lime Tree Is Docile, the texture derived from a natural source is highly abstracted, suggesting a skeletal, almost petrified botanical form that dominates the composition. The work transforms the simple structure of a lime tree into an unsettling, yet meticulously detailed, surreal organism. Produced during a peak period of Surrealist exploration, c. 1925, the print captures the movement's drive to transform ordinary objects into poetic mysteries. This influential early print, representing Ernst’s mastery of mechanized texture transfer, is securely held in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art.