What is the title of J.R.R. Tolkien’s short story about a painter and his tree?

J.R.R. Tolkien’s short story about a painter and his tree is Leaf by Niggle.

Niggle is an artist who spends much of his time working on a vast painting of a tree. He becomes absorbed in individual leaves and details, while practical obligations and the approach of death prevent him from completing the work as planned.

The story was published in 1945 in the Dublin Review. It is frequently interpreted as a reflection on artistic creation, mortality, duty, and the relationship between a creator’s small efforts and a larger completed reality.

The story is not part of the main Middle-earth narrative. Its allegorical qualities have encouraged biographical readings, but Tolkien resisted treating his fiction as a simple one-to-one code. The title’s “Niggle” suggests both painstaking attention and the limitations of unfinished human work.