Which Tolkien short story features the artist Niggle, who must complete a tree?

“Leaf by Niggle” is the Tolkien short story featuring the artist Niggle, who must complete a tree.

Tolkien wrote the story during the late 1930s, and it was first published in 1945 in the Dublin Review. Niggle is a painter who becomes so absorbed in a single tree that he struggles to finish other obligations. The story follows his frustration, illness, journey, and eventual discovery of a transformed version of his artistic vision.

The tale is often read as an allegory about creativity, unfinished work, duty, and the relationship between imagination and reality. Tolkien resisted treating it as a simple one-to-one explanation of his life, but readers have connected Niggle’s tree with the author’s own artistic concerns.

Unlike The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, the story is not part of Middle-earth. It is a compact modern fantasy that presents Tolkien’s ideas about art and spiritual growth through a symbolic narrative.