Landscape with Four Trees, Birger Sandzén (1871–1954)

Birger Sandzen came to Bethany College in Lindsborg, Kansas in September of 1894 after reading I Sverige (1890). This book, written by the president of the college, Dr. Carl Swensson, described the founding of Bethany College by Swedish immigrants on the plains of central Kansas and inspired Sandzen to emigrate.

Before his immigration to the United States, Sandzen studied in Stockholm with the noted painter-etcher Anders Zorn. After two years as Zorn’s student, Sandzen traveled to Paris in the winter of 1893-94. In Paris he discovered the pointillist technique and divisionist color theories of Seurat and Aman-Jean, which he incorporated into his art. Landscape with Four Trees, a Rocky Mountain scene, exemplifies his debt to these French influences. Sandzen placed bold pigments on the canvas juxtaposed with such precision that the color mixing is done optically-by the eye of the viewer-rather than on the artist’s palette.