The dark, mysterious forest is a common subject in German Romantic art and was one of Ernst’s own favourite themes. The forest held a personal significance for the artist, as he never forgot the childhood feelings of enchantment and terror induced by his first sight of the forests south of Cologne when aged just three. Ernst painted a series of ‘forest’ works towards the end of the 1920s, drawing on his fear and fascination to produce paintings in which the forest appears as a forbidding and impenetrable wall, hemming in the viewer and shutting out the world beyond.