Geology and the Art of Birger Sandzen
Birger Sandzen (1871-1954), a Swedish-born artist who spent his whole career in Lindsborg, Kansas, to which he emigrated in 1894, is known for his images of Kansas and areas farther west such as Colorado and New Mexico. Although he painted portraits occasionally and was also fond of still lifes, especially floral ones of the Kansas sunflower, the large majority of his many works were landscapes that, devoid of much or any human presence, concentrated on the natural formations of the Midwestern and Western topography.
Sandzen was highly prolific, producing 330 different prints of various media, hundreds of watercolors, countless drawings, including 500 large ones he destroyed when they were no longer useful and 5655 sketches in the 83 sketchbooks he left behind, and at least 2890 oil paintings. Many of those works depict scenery from the artist's adopted state, including the Hillstrom Museum of Art's 1912 oil painting Dry Creek Bed, Kansas, the subject of this FOCUS IN/ON project. Perhaps as many as fifty-five percent of Sandzen's landscapes are Kansas imagery, and it is clear that he developed a deep fondness for the gentle plains, rolling hills, low bluffs, and stream beds of the state, even after he began summering in Colorado and painting more dramatic scenes like the Rocky Mountains or, occasionally, the Grand Canyon.
He had been born in Blidsberg, in Vstergtland, a province in southwestern Sweden. His father Johan, a theologian and pastor in the church, was talented as a violinist and poet. His mother Clara had been interested from her youth in drawing and painting. The Sandzens provided a cultured household, and their son, the youngest of three, had his first formal art instruction when he was nine years old. This was with Gustaf Lundblad, an artist and assistant minister working with Johan in the parish of Jrps, to which the family transferred in 1877. When Sandzen was ten, he enrolled in the Skara Lroverk, a residential school in the nearby cathedral town of Skara, where his older brothers Carl and Gustaf were already studying. There his artistic development continued under Olof Erlandsson (1845-1916), a dedicated instructor who instilled in Sandzen the importance of drawing as a basis for other forms of art. After several years working together, Erlandsson suggested that Sandzen also study painting, which he eagerly began in 1887.
It is not surprising, therefore, that Sandzen was from early on interested in understanding the geology of the landscapes that would typify his maturity as an artist, even though he abhorred the thought that artworks should serve as topographical illustrations of particular places. In one of his many writings about art, a 1915 article titled "The Southwest as a Sketching Ground," he warned, "I hope nobody will suspect me of recommending view-painting, since we have already had an overdose of advanced geography in our art...." Sandzen believed that art was to be an inspired and personal response of the artist to his subject matter, not a transcription of nature. He felt that while it was essential for the landscape artist to grasp the structure of the topography that inspired him, that was not the most important aspect of his work. The artist had the right and duty to speak in his own aesthetic language, and did not necessarily need to adhere to the scientific truth of the subject at hand.
After he finished at Skara in 1890, Sandzen's formal education continued at the acclaimed Lund University, where he attended lectures in the history of art and studied French, another subject at which he excelled. He seems to have enrolled at the University intending to pursue an academic career in a subject other than art, but recognizing his strong desire to become an artist, he quit Lund after a single semester and headed to Stockholm with the goal of earning admission to the Royal Academy of Art. Since there was a long waiting list for entrance to the Academy, Sandzen's strategy was to first study at the Tekniska Skolan, or Technical School, which often served as a stepping-stone to the more prestigious Academy.
Before any openings at the Academy occurred, Sandzen learned that famous Swedish artist Anders Zorn (1862-1920) was planning to start an alternative art school. In 1891, he began study at Zorn's new institution, one of eight initial pupils at what later became the anti-academic Konstnrsfrbundet (Artists' League) of Stockholm. He often painted five hours each day in Zorn's atelier, learning important lessons that included the master's loose handling of paint, an approach that Sandzen soon adopted. He considered Zorn to be brilliant and, although Sandzen's palette developed into a much lighter-colored, higher-keyed tonality, Zorn's emphasis on the significance of color was crucial for him. It must have pleased him a great deal when his teacher expressed admiration for his handling and understanding of color.
Following his studies at Zorn's school, Sandzen left Stockholm to study in Paris, then the most vital art center of the world. He studied with Edmond-Franois Aman-Jean (1860-1935), a painter connected with Impressionism who had for a time shared a studio with Pointillist painter Georges Seurat (1859-1891). The association with Aman-Jean had a lasting impact on Sandzen's style and handling of color, especially during a period in the first decade of the twentieth century when he worked in a distinctly pointillist manner, applying his paint in small points or blobs that the viewer's eye blended together to form a vibrant image.
Sandzen came to America expecting to stay for only two years, but his residency in Lindsborg extended for the remainder of his life, and he served on the Bethany faculty until his retirement in 1946. This longevity had much to do with the artist's sense of loyalty to his new institution, and was also related to the presence in Kansas of Alfrida Leksell, whom he met at Bethany only a few days after his arrival and whom he married in 1900. Sandzen returned to Sweden three times for visits, but never moved back to his native country.
He also never accepted offers of teaching positions from the numerous other schools that tried to tempt him away from Bethany. One of these was Gustavus Adolphus College, in 1902 or 1903, and while Sandzen never taught at Gustavus, he had a direct impact on its art program because one of his pupils, Lorena Daeschner Hall, in 1938 became the College's first art instructor. In 1941, Hall brought her former mentor to campus for a lecture and exhibition, and a number of other works by Sandzen in the Museum's collection came to Gustavus as a result of that visit, including two additional oil paintings besides Dry Creek Bed, Kansas.
Soon after arriving from Sweden in 1894, Sandzen began traversing the countryside around Lindsborg on sketching trips, which became the inspiration for many of his paintings and prints. Sandzen was devoted to the state's scenery, both near Lindsborg and farther west in Graham County, around the farm acquired in 1906 by his in-laws, Erik and Charlotte Leksell. His interest in Kansas' relatively gentle topography did not diminish after he became acquainted with more spectacular locations like the Rockies, and it should not be thought that his preference was for other states like Colorado. In his 1915 article "The Southwest as a Sketching Ground," he praised the picturesque qualities of the rolling prairies, shallow ravines, and creek beds of Kansas, writing that he considered such features to be "an ideal sketching ground."
Sandzen, furthermore, felt that color was crucial in the artist's creation of structure, which he thought needed to be built up from the start with color, instead of the frequent practice of shaping forms monochromatically and adding hues over top. Many of his pencil sketches were annotated with color indications for guidance in the paintings derived from them. In his 1915 article "The Technique of Painting," Sandzen stated his belief that the weak point in Western art of his period was its color treatment, later pleading, "...let us experiment and learn to know the joy of orchestral color." His daughter, noting that other painters of his era such as Regionalists worked with colors that were less brilliant, once asked if he might consider toning down his works and letting the dust of the landscape be seen. Sandzen's reply was that it would soon rain and the colors would again return to their brilliance. He also told Margaret, "Painting is mainly color expression, although other elements are necessary, such as form and composition, harmony and contrast." And he told her that if he were to choose just one painter from recent times who could rank with the great masters of the past, it would be French Impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) -- an artist known especially for his bright and cheerful colors.
Although Sandzen did not formally study geology, it was of interest to him, and it was a subject that was emphasized at Bethany in its early years. The first teacher at the College, Johan A. Udden, was a geologist who became prominent in the field. He left Bethany before Sandzen's arrival, however, teaching for many years thereafter at Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois, but prior to his departure, he worked on geological field studies in the area. A colleague who had collaborated with Udden, John E. Welin, was Professor of Natural History and Geology at Bethany when Sandzen arrived in 1894. At that time, Bethany students studied mineralogy in their junior year and geology in their senior year. Sandzen was on friendly terms with Welin, and must have had many opportunities to discuss geology and his interest in rocks with him. Sandzen also developed a friendship with prominent geologist Fritioff M. Fryxell, a noted expert on the Grand Teton Mountains who taught at Augustana College. He and the artist made hiking trips into the Rocky Mountains around Estes Park, Colorado, where Sandzen spent many of his summers in the late 1920s and 1930s, and they doubtless discussed at some length the geology of the area. Fryxell was an advocate for landscape painters and, as a result of his promotion of Sandzen, there are several works by the artist in the collection of the Augustana College Art Museum.
Water is, of course, of fundamental importance not only in shaping the land but also in sustaining life on earth, and the current state of world water resources is under consideration at the 2010 annual Nobel Conference of Gustavus Adolphus College, titled "H2O: Uncertain Resource." In conjunction with this theme, two important points of geological interest can be made about Dry Creek Bed, Kansas.
The exposed rock formations lining the valley walls of the creek bed, indicated with the pinks and creams of Sandzen's palette, are suggestive of the Ogallala Formation, a fluvial sedimentary deposit derived from ancestral streams flowing off the emerging Rocky Mountains during the period from about ten to two million years ago (the late Miocene to Pliocene periods). The state geologic map verifies that the Ogallala Formation is indeed present in the headward areas of Wild Horse Creek in Graham County. The Ogallala Formation is an extensive unit underlying much of the High Plains, ranging from South Dakota into Texas and eastern New Mexico, covering over 111.4 million acres (174,000 square miles). While relatively thin in the area depicted in the painting by Sandzen, the Ogallala Formation in some locations reaches thicknesses of over 1000 feet. It consists mostly of sands, silts, and gravels, much of it relatively unconsolidated, allowing for good porosity and permeability and making it able to hold large amounts of groundwater. Also called the High Plains Aquifer, the Ogallala Formation is the principal source of water supplying the Great Plains region, with water from it irrigating one-fifth of all U.S. cropland.
Although these crucial considerations of the water resources in the area around Wild Horse Creek would no doubt have been deeply interesting and disturbing to Sandzen, it is unlikely that in 1912, when he painted Dry Creek Bed, Kansas, anybody was concerned about the availability or quality of water in the region.