Which Tolkien story features the artist Niggle and a mysterious tree?

Tolkien’s story featuring the artist Niggle and a mysterious tree is “Leaf by Niggle.”

The story follows Niggle, a painter who becomes absorbed in creating a vast tree filled with leaves. He struggles to complete the work because he is distracted by practical obligations and by the needs of his neighbor, Parish. Niggle’s situation reflects the tension between artistic ambition, everyday duties, generosity, and mortality.

“Leaf by Niggle” was first published in the Dublin Review in 1945 and later collected in Tree and Leaf. It is one of Tolkien’s more openly allegorical stories, although Tolkien often resisted simple one-to-one interpretations of his fiction. The tale is not part of Middle-earth, and Niggle is not a hobbit or an elf. Its tree imagery and themes of unfinished creation have nevertheless made it an important text for understanding Tolkien’s ideas about art and subcreation.