content: 2026-07-29 capture run — 14 finds across 10 productive sources

2026-07-29 01:30:02 -04:00
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+name: "Portraits of Trees: Chestnuts"
+subtitle: "Two different trees, one English name, a century of paintings"
+date: 2026-07-29
+shortlist: true
+link: "https://eclecticlight.co/2026/07/28/portraits-of-trees-chestnuts/"
+linkText: "eclecticlight.co"
+source: "The Eclectic Light Company"
+topics: [design-and-art, outdoors-and-nature]
+tags: [painting, botany, art-history]
+description: "How to tell the sweet chestnut from the horse chestnut in Sisley, Pissarro, Van Gogh and Schiele — the leaves give it away every time."
+---
+
+"Chestnut" in English covers two unrelated trees, and once you know that the compound leaf belongs to the horse chestnut you cannot un-see which one each painter actually stood in front of. Maclise put Friar Tuck under a horse chestnut in 1839; Sisley's avenue at La Celle-Saint-Cloud is the other. There is also a precise date for when British children started smashing conkers instead of hazelnuts: 1848, Isle of Wight.