The fallen tree the painter wanted to keep

Diday cared deeply about his studies. At the end of his life, he considered them a particularly important part of his work and asked that his attachment to them be respected. The Fondation Custodia reports this testimony in its entry for a small Uprooted Tree attributed to the artist. The association is suggestive: where we might see only a preparatory exercise, the painter saw a work he treasured. A stump and roots can thus bring us close to his practice as surely as a mountain panorama.

We must begin with the catalogue's qualification: the study is attributed to François Diday. Its author is therefore not presented with the same certainty as that of an unreservedly signed canvas. The painting, an oil on canvas measuring 21.6 by 29.3 centimetres, belongs to the Collection Frits Lugt in Paris. An inscription leads specialists to propose that it was made near Belalp in the Swiss Alps. This indication remains tied to interpretation of the material document; it does not suffice to reconstruct a particular excursion.

Looking at the work — In the Fondation Custodia's image, a tangle of roots and branches occupies the centre of the small painting. A large pale rocky mass rises behind it on the left, while bluer and grey surfaces open the background. A few green tufts appear near the wood. The lower part contains very pale, less worked areas. The roots' twisting lines thus differ from broader rocky planes. The motif seems captured at close range, with particular attention to the meeting of materials.

The catalogue recalls the recurrence of felled or uprooted trees in Diday's Alpine sketches. In his large compositions, trunks can contribute to a landscape's dramatic force. Here, their proximity changes our gaze. The stump is not reduced to a silhouette we need to identify quickly before advancing towards a summit. Its lines cross, return and divide the space. Viewers can follow them for their own sake before seeking a horizon. The small painting turns a landscape element into a prolonged encounter with a form.

The difference in scale is also a difference in task. For Diday's large views, the MCBA describes a studio composition nourished by studies made before nature. A study can supply a detail; it can also preserve the intensity of the observation that produced it. Nothing in the entry connects this Uprooted Tree to a specific monumental painting. Its value therefore does not depend on such a link. It can be viewed as a work already possessing an organisation, colours and a distinctive way of distributing attention.

The artist's testimony gives this independence a human weight. Saying that studies matter means recognising the value of moments when the painter stopped before something. We do not know the moment that might have been devoted to this stump, or its exact duration. The canvas nevertheless makes concentration perceptible: changes of material matter, the wood's directions demand distinction, the background supports the motif without describing everything. The work preserves less a story of action than a decision to look at a form long enough for it to become painting.

The open attribution does not cancel this encounter. It simply obliges us to hold together two experiences: looking at what is present and knowing what remains to be established. We can recognise a kinship with Diday's studies without claiming that recognition is definitive proof. The catalogue offers a proposed reading supported by comparisons and honestly names its degree of certainty. This caution gives the small painting a present-day history, also made of research, inscriptions to examine and comparisons to pursue around a preserved object.

When the eye returns to the centre, the fallen tree seems less a sign of destruction than a group of lines the painting has chosen to retain. This impression belongs to viewing; it replaces neither the attribution nor Diday's testimony. It joins them modestly. The painter defended his studies, and a museum today invites us to take this one seriously. The story's final turn lies in this change of value: what might have remained a piece of wood beside a path becomes a small work before which we can still pause.