Donald Shaw MacLaughlan, born - The Lake of Garda, Italy - unknown - T-Shirt

A single tree fills a vertical charcoal drawing, its trunk rising from the lower centre and its branches spreading across the upper half of the sheet.

Visual Elements & Composition

The drawing is built from charcoal greys and pale cream, with black reserved for the darkest accents along the trunk. The bark is worked in soft, smudged tones, so the tree reads as solid mass rather than outline. A slender cypress-like tree stands at the left edge, and a hilltop with a small tower sits faintly in the distance. Across the lower left, a pale curving shape is banded with horizontal strokes of shadow. The dense, shaded trunk against the open, light ground gives the scene its stillness. The date, 1913, is written in the lower right corner.

Meaning & Symbolism

The tree is the subject, and it is drawn at close range so that it dominates the sheet. The distant tower and hill carry the character of the place named in the title, the shores of Lake Garda in northern Italy, a sunlit countryside that drew British artists in the early twentieth century. Donald Shaw MacLaughlan (1876–1938) was a Scottish-born painter and etcher who worked in London and Paris. This drawing shows his command of charcoal, using tone alone to model form and shade.

On the Unisex Heavy Cotton Tee

A vertical drawing suits a shirt worn upright. The trunk rises up the front of the wearer, with the branches opening toward the shoulders, so the tree stays whole at a glance. The cream ground keeps the shadowed centre of the image in focus, and the cypress and distant hill frame it at the edges. Worn close, the drawing reads the way it was made, at close range, with its shade and stillness in view.