Apple Tree, Pointillist Version

In 1909 Mondrian joined the Dutch section of the Theosophical Society, a movement that tried to fold religion and the study of nature into one system of belief. The Dallas Museum of Art dates this apple tree to 1908 or 1909, just as that interest was taking hold, and suggests that the dominant blue and the triangular crown may echo symbols the theosophists held to be universal.

The technique strikes you first. Sky and ground are laid in with separate dabs of blue, green and pink over a warm orange ground, set in rows that radiate from the tree, a loose version of the dotted method named in the title. Over them the branches are slashed in black. It is oil on composition board, given to Dallas in 1982 by the James H. and Lillian Clark Foundation.