"That was actually quite surprising for me because Goshun’s painting is more realistic," Gao said. To test if this value had something to do with tree recognisability in art, the researchers ...

In London, a copse of reconstituted trees is welcoming audiences to Ai Weiwei’s exhibition at the Royal Academy, where, eight years ago, David Hockney unveiled his 40ft painting Bigger Trees Near ...

Even abstract paintings such as Piet Mondrian's 1912 cubist Gray Tree, which doesn’t visually show treelike colours, can be identified as trees if a realistic value for α is used, researchers say.

“Grey Tree” also realistically captures the natural variation in branch diameters, even when the painting gives the viewer little else to go on. Without realistic scaling, would this painting ...