Landscape with Red Tree and White Birches

Oil on canvas by Cummings, who did not title his paintings; the title given here is purely descriptive. 18" x 24". "By E.E. Cummings" written on the wood frame, apparently in another's hand. Cummings signed only a small fraction of his work, deliberately and for philosophical reasons: he believed the work should stand on its own -- and be judged on its own merits or faults -- rather than be judged by who the creator of it was. When he backed away from the New York art scene in the late 1920s and early 1930s, Cummings was backing away from what he considered to be an artistic milieu driven by personality and ego rather than by art. After his early period as an abstract artist, he focused on representational art for the rest of his life, but often -- as in this painting -- he used a palette and a style that owed much to his early influences among modern artists: Cezanne, Matisse, and the Fauvists. One tack missing from the top of the stretched canvas; else fine.