Hazel is not a headline tree in Western art, but it is a persistent, recurring presence appearing in botanical plates, still‑life traditions, wildlife painting, medieval symbolism, and museum‑level material culture. This page gathers some notable examples.

Botanical & Scientific Illustration

These are foundational works in European and American visual culture, and Hazel appears frequently.

Pierre‑Joseph Redouté

• Corylus maxima (Filbert) — 19th‑century engraving, Paris (1827). A classic, high‑fidelity botanical plate.

Antoine Laurent de Jussieu / Turpin

• American Hazelnut (Corylus americana) — hand‑colored copperplate engraving (1837). A major French botanical illustrator’s rendering.

Mary Vaux Walcott

• Hazelnut — watercolor, Smithsonian American Art Museum. A precise, widely reproduced botanical study.

W.H.J. Boot

• Hazel Tree and Hazel, Catkins and Fruit, 19th‑century botanical paintings. Common in print collections and digital archives.

Still‑Life Traditions – Hazel as motif

Adriaen Coorte

• Still Life with Hazel‑nuts (1696), Ashmolean Museum. A rare still‑life focused entirely on hazelnuts, the only known instance in Coorte’s oeuvre.

Naturalistic Wildlife Painting

German School

• A Squirrel Eating a Hazel Nut on a Tree Trunk A classic wildlife composition with Hazel as the food source and visual anchor.

Hazel in Broader Tree-Themed Exhibitions

Whitworth Art Gallery – Performing Trees

A major exhibition exploring trees as symbolic actors in art history. Hazel is included among the represented species, though not singled out. (Search confirms Hazel appears in tree‑themed collections but not as a headline species.)

Medieval & Renaissance Symbolic

Joos van Cleve – Virgin and Child (ca. 1525)

Includes a halved walnut as symbolic fruit; the Met’s commentary discusses nuts (including hazelnuts) as medieval symbols of fertility, faith and the Trinity. Hazelnuts appear in medieval imagery and texts referenced by the Met.

Seasonal & Decorative Medieval Revival

The Cloisters (Met Museum)

Hazelnuts used in Christmastide decorations, based on medieval evidence. This is not “artwork” in the painting sense, but it is museum‑level Hazel material culture.

Hazel in Symbolic Image (The Unicorn Tapestries)

Hazel enters symbolic art most strikingly in The Unicorn is Killed and Brought Back to the Castle, where a Hazel tree appears in the lower left corner, shown in the impossible medieval state of both fruit and flower. A red squirrel sits in its branches with a nut in its paws. The tapestry’s designers used botanical impossibility to signal enchanted time, and Hazel’s dual state mirrors the unicorn’s own dual nature; wild and tame, mortal and immortal. This is the most famous Hazel depiction in Western art.