On view
William R. Elfers Gallery
Mountainous Landscape with Lake and Wading Bird,
ca. 1872
A dark green paint permeates the foliage of the middle and foreground of this landscape, branching and spreading out across the paper’s surface like moss or lichen on the forest floor. These reticulations were made not with a brush but by pressing wet paint between two sheets of paper, squashing the paint into natural fractal patterns. These chance patterns formed the basis of Sand’s composition, which she worked up into a landscape. As she described, “With the aid of my imagination, I see woods, forests, or lakes, and I accentuate these vague forms produced by chance.” Though an accomplished artist, Sand was primarily known for her writing—at one point, she was the most popular novelist in Europe—and also pursued interests in natural sciences such as botany and geology. She called her drawings in this technique “dendrites,” borrowing a scientific term for treelike mineral structures.
Information
ca. 1872
- Maison de Balzac, Dessins d'écrivains français du XIXe siècle (Paris, Maison de Balzac, 25 novembre 1983-26 février 1984). , no. 197
- Nicole Savy, “Une table à dessin ou un bureau? George Sand et les arts visuels (1804-1837),” Mélanges en hommage à Françoise Cachin (Gallimard: Réunion des musées nationaux, 2002).
- George Sand. Une nature d’artiste. (Paris, Musée de la Vie Romantique, 2004), no. 162 (illus.)
- George Sand, Histoire de ma Vie, Livre 1 (Project Gutenberg, 2012)
- Martine Reid, George Sand (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2018).
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Emilie Sitzia. “Watercolours and Dendrites, Lakes and Seascapes: Water in George Sand’s Visual Art,” Water Imagery in George Sand’s Work (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2018).
