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Gray Tree

painting by Piet Mondrian

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJun 26, 2026
Entity authorityQ5598238
Source-derived summary

Gray Tree is a 1911 oil painting by Piet Mondrian. The work was painted on canvas on a board measuring 78.5 × 107.5 cm (8,440 square centimetres, 1,308 sq in). It is exhibited at Kunstmuseum Den Haag in The Hague, the Netherlands.

The work was created at a time when Mondrian was beginning to experiment with Cubism: its foreground and background elements seem to intermingle, and the palette is very restricted. The tree is subtly oval in form, following another Cubist practice seen in works by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. Mondrian's oval became explicit, framing the work, in paintings that followed over the next three or four years. Apple Tree in Flower, also from 1912, is a similarly sized composition. Though the outline of the "apple tree" recalls that of Gray Tree, the work is significantly more faceted and abstract.

References

Sources

Milner, John (1992). Mondrian.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Gray Tree” as painting by Piet Mondrian. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Gray, Tree and painting.

Editorial reviewA useful identification and reception guide that helps separate the work itself from editions, performances, ownership and later interpretation. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1911, 1912, 1992—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1911. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Gray, Tree and painting providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Gray Tree”, the useful work is to connect “painting by Piet Mondrian” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5598238. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1911, 1912 and 1992.

Critical limits

Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Gray Tree”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Gray Tree primary sources, Gray Tree archive and Gray research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Gray Tree”?
  2. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
  3. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Gray Tree” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.