Landscape with Four Trees

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 1893–1894. In Paris he discovered the pointillist technique and divisionist color theories that 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.