Nocturne

A professor of art and languages at Bethany College in Lindsborg, Kansas, Birger Sandzén became a productive and important printmaker. He fostered interest in printmaking throughout the Midwest as a charter member of the Prairie Print Makers, a group formed in 1930 to encourage art making and collecting.

Sandzén had only recently taken up printmaking when he created this delicate night landscape. Nocturne's dark, abstract qualities and the musical evocation of the title align it with the "art for art's sake" philosophy promoted in the 19th-century by painter James McNeill Whistler. Landscape remained Sandzén's primary subject, although he developed a more structural style indebted to French Post-Impressionist Paul Cézanne.