More than any other element of nature, Annie Brigman was drawn to trees because she found beauty in what she saw as their struggle to survive. She compared their endurance to the human struggle, which she believed was necessary for personal and creative growth. Brigman had first realized that the nude figure could be used to express personal struggle when she saw Robert Demachy’s 1904 photograph titled Struggle. Shortly after this, she spoke of struggle—as both an image and an idea—as “wonderful.” It was a theme that would become central to her own life story.