20. Birger Sandzén
(1871-1954)

Mountain Lake

(click on image to print)
Sandzén: Mountain Lake

Mountain Lake

Woodcut, 1921, 149 x 125 mm., Greenough W 41 (?) A fine, effective impression, with the impress of the block clear, on simili-japon with good margins, titled and signed in pencil and perhaps from the edition of 100. The lack of cataloging assurance results from the dimensions not matching those given by Greenough, indicating either that his are wrong or that there is a second, reduced version of the image. Sandzén was born in Blidsberg, Sweden, studied with Anders Zorn and, in Paris, with Aman-Jean, and came to America in 1894 to be a teacher at Bethany College, Lindsborg, Kansas, a position he held for the next fifty-two years. As painter and print maker he was the preeminent interpreter of the prairie and the Rocky Mountains and his name in those areas is still hallowed. He died in Lindsborg at the age of eighty-three.