Evening, Lindsborg, Study of Cottonwood Trees

A small group of cottonwood trees rises from a low hill, their leafy tops leaning together as the day fades into a pale evening sky. Painted in 1912 by Birger Sandzén, this scene comes from Lindsborg, Kansas, the small prairie town where the Swedish-born artist settled and painted for much of his life. He worked in dabs and dots of color, and if you follow the pink of the clouds or the green of the leaves you will see hundreds of tiny separate marks. That approach came from the Impressionist and Pointillist painters Sandzén had studied back in Europe before crossing the ocean.

The trees seem to sway ever so slightly, as if a soft wind is passing through them at dusk. That gentle movement gives the whole picture a feeling of a quiet moment caught in time. Sandzén liked to return to the same subjects again and again, watching how the light shifted from morning to night, and the word "study" in the title tells us this was one of those working observations rather than a big showpiece. The subject could hardly be simpler, just a few trees on a rise, yet it holds all the calm of an everyday prairie evening.