Niggle’s painting symbolizes the creative process as something that’s both organic and laborious. The painting is of a huge tree in a landscape of forests and mountains, and the tree seems to have a life of its own, growing larger and housing families of birds. When Niggle attempts to paint the mountains, it’s as if he can already see them: the picture exists somewhere out there, and he’s just trying to capture it. The painting can be understood to represent creativity as something that grows wild—not simply dreamt up by a single person but inspired by the world around them.
Niggle never completes the painting to look the way he imagines. After he goes on his journey, the canvas meets an unceremonious end, with only a tiny corner of it framed and hung in a museum that is soon burned down. However, its image is fully realized in living form in the land Niggle reaches after the Workhouse, and he is able to complete it by tending to the land. When the painting is brought to life not only for Niggle to enjoy but as a resting place for many who leave the Workhouse, it comes to symbolize the unpredictability and aliveness of the creative process: one cannot always have complete power over the final form of their creation.
Niggle’s Painting Quotes in Leaf by Niggle
He had a number of pictures on hand; most of them were too large and ambitious for his skill. He was the sort of painter who can paint leaves better than trees. He used to spend a long time on a single leaf, trying to catch its shape, and its sheen, and the glistening of dewdrops on its edges. Yet he wanted to paint a whole tree, with all of its leaves in the same style, and all of them different.
There was one picture in particular which bothered him. It had begun with a leaf caught in the wind, and it became a tree; and the tree grew, sending out innumerable branches, and thrusting out the most fantastic roots. Strange birds came and settled on the twigs and had to be attended to. Then all round the Tree, and behind it, through the gaps in the leaves and boughs, a country began to open out; and there were glimpses of a forest marching over the land, and of mountains tipped with snow.
When Parish looked at Niggle’s garden (which was often) he saw mostly weeds; and when he looked at Niggle’s picture (which was seldom) he saw only green and grey patches and black lines, which seemed to him nonsensical. He did not mind mentioning the weeds (a neighbourly duty), but he refrained from giving any opinion of the pictures. He thought this was very kind, and he did not realise that, even if it was kind, it was not kind enough. Help with the weeds (and perhaps praise for the pictures) would have been better.
Before him stood the Tree, his Tree, finished. If you could say that of a Tree that was alive, its leaves opening, its branches growing and bending in the wind that Niggle had so often felt or guessed, and had so often failed to catch. He gazed at the Tree, and slowly he lifted his arms and opened them wide.
“It’s a gift!” he said. He was referring to his art, and also to the result; but he was using the word quite literally.
“Of course, painting has uses,” said Tompkins. “But you couldn’t make use of his painting. There is plenty of scope for bold young men not afraid of new ideas and new methods. None for this old-fashioned stuff. Private daydreaming. He could not have designed a telling poster to save his life. Always fiddling with leaves and flowers. I asked him why, once. He said he thought they were pretty. Can you believe it? He said pretty! ‘What, digestive and genital organs of plants?’ I said to him; and he had nothing to answer. Silly footler.”
Niggle’s Painting Symbol Timeline in Leaf by Niggle
