SWEDES: TheWayTheyWere
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    • The Bethany Artist & the Bethany Scientist: Lydia & Emil >
      • ​"First Swedish Agricultural Company" Lindsborg Founders, 1868 >
        • Swedish Pastor Olof Olsson Immigrating to Lindsborg 1869, June 27th Arrival >
          • Church and Lindsborg Founder Pastor Olsson, 1869 - 1876 >
            • ​"He Gave God Glory" The Story of Olof Olsson, ​1841 - 1900
      • Their "Bethany Lutheran Church" 1869 >
        • Their "Augustana Lutheran Synod," 1860 - 1962 >
          • The Augustana Heritage Association, 2000 - 2016
        • Their "Augustana Women's Missionary Society," 1892
      • Their "Bethany Lutheran Home" Since 1907
      • Their Lindsborg's "First" Swedish Smoky Valley Community Chronicle 1909 and Their "Second" 1919 >
        • "Pioneer Swedish-American Culture in Central Kansas," 1965 >
          • "The Smoky Valley in The After Years," 1969
      • Their 1920s Coronado Heights Photographs and their Smoky Valley Historical Association (SVHA)
      • Their 1936 1873 Swedish Homestead, "The Old Deere Farm," The Peter J. Larson Farm, etc. >
        • Their 1873 Swede House
        • A Smoky Valley Swedish Virtual Memorial - ​"Dedicated to the Memory of the Smoky Valley Swedish Settlements" >
          • Recognizing & Thanking >
            • - Claude Koehn -- The Before and After
      • Their 1940 Deere Home >
        • Emil's and Nina's 1961 Thunderbird
      • 1943, After Lydia--The Building of the Lindsborg Hospital
    • Their Bethany College Handel's "Messiah" Performances, 1882 on... >
      • "Messiah" Performers, Venues & Audiences, Press and Broadcasts
    • Their Bethany College 1899 Swedish Artists' Midwest Art Exhibition
    • Their Bethany College 1902 "Terrible Swedes," Coach Bennie Owen, Their 1903 "Rockar Stockar"
    • Their Bethany College 1904 St. Louis World's Fair Swedish Pavilion
    • Their Bethany College Anniversary Celebrations: 15, 20, 25, 100 years >
      • Their Celebrating 15 Years of Bethany College, 1881-1896. The First Bethany Annual, 1895-96
      • Their Celebrating 20 Years of Bethany College, 1881-1901. The "Forget-Me-Not," 1902 >
        • The King of Sweden's Emissary, 1901
        • Yale University's Bethany Club
      • Their Celebrating 25 Years of Bethany College, 1881-1906, "Souvenir of Lindsborg and Bethany College"
      • Their Celebrating 100 Years of Bethany College, 1881-1981, "The Centennial of Bethany College"
    • Their "I WAS THERE" Coin ~ Bethany College Celebration, 1902
    • Their Bethany College's 1937 Introduction to New Sweden, founded in 1638 >
      • Deere's Introduction to New Sweden
    • Their friend, Emory Lindquist, and his 1975 "Bethany in Kansas, the history of a college" >
      • Their friend, Emory Lindquist, and his 1953, "Smoky Valley People, A History of Lindsborg, Kansas"
    • Their friend, Leon Lungstrom, and his 1990 "History of Natural Science and Mathematics at Bethany College, Lindsborg, Kansas"
  • Swedish Immigration Story, 1854
    • "The Story of the Old Spoon" by Ingrid Anderson Sohlberg & Daughter Lydia Sohlberg Deere, 1937
    • Who They Left Behind
    • From Sweden with Love Collections >
      • The Swedish Sohlberg Kosta Portraits, 1867 >
        • The Swedish Sohlberg Kosta Glass
        • The Swedish Sohlberg Letters
      • The Swedish Sohlberg Royal Gold Thread Embroidery Sampler (c1890s)
      • The Swedish Sohlberg Post Cards (c1890s)
      • The Swedish Sohlberg Magazines, (c1940s)
      • The Swedish Sohlberg Books, 1819/1886 to 1899
      • The Swedish Sohlberg Albums, late 19th early 20th centuries
      • The Swedish Deere Coins -- 1801-1929
    • Lydia Sohlberg Deere's 1927 "Lindsborg Swedish Club's" Handwork >
      • Lydia's Signatured Black Book of Her Handwritten Sewing Instructions >
        • Nina Sohlberg's Child's Sewing "Little Dots" PICTURE BOOK >
          • The Lindsborg Swedish Club's "Allers Monster-Tidnings" magazine, 1940
  • Artist Lydia Sohlberg Deere
    • Lydia's Lindsborg Photography, 1900-1925 >
      • The Hats
      • The Smoky River
      • The Smoky Hill Bluffs
      • Coronado Heights -- One Winter's Day
      • In and Around Lindsborg
      • Sohlberg House with Parents >
        • Our Sohlberg Home and Neighbor Alma Luise Olson
      • Sohlberg House with Emil 1916 to 1920 >
        • Lydia's Travels with Deere 1916 - 1930s >
          • Lydia's California Photographs for Painting
          • Lydia's Palm Springs Pictorial Magazine, 1938-1939
          • Lydia's California Pressed Wild Flowers, c1930
      • "LYDIA'S WORLD" Photography Exhibitions in Lindsborg, 2005 - 2011
    • Lydia's Art, 1919-1938 >
      • Lydia's Art: The Kansas Collection >
        • The Sketches
      • Lydia's Art: The Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico Collection >
        • The Sketches
      • Lydia's Art: The California Collection >
        • The Sketches
    • Lydia's Art Professor Sven Birger Sandzén, 1871-1954 >
      • Lydia's Assignments for Professor Sandzén >
        • Students of Sandzén 2019 Exhibition
        • Bethany Home ~ Celebrating Artist Birger Sandzén through His Students' Paintings
    • Lydia's Art Professor Birger Sandzén's "Art Exhibitions" ... 1893-1940 >
      • Lydia's Art Professor Sandzén's Exhibition at the Babcock Gallery in New York, 1922
    • Lydia's Sandzén's Body of Work Reviewed by N.Y.C, 1984 "American Impressionism," author William H. Gerdts
    • Lydia's and Sandzén's Swedish Artist Friend Charles Edward Hallberg, 1855-1940
    • Lydia's and Sandzén's Swedish Artist Friend Oscar Brousse Jacobson, 1882-1966
    • Lydia’s Sohlberg Family Connection to Sandzén, 1880-1894-1993
  • Scientist Emil O. Deere
    • Deere's & Lydia's Bethany -- Lydia's Photography, 1906-1925 >
      • Bethany College "Campus from Above"
      • Bethany College "The Gateway" 1917 and "Bethany Campus Association" 1912
      • Bethany College "College Street," today's "North First Street"
      • Bethany College "Campus Life"
      • "Bethany College's Earliest Buildings" >
        • Bethany College "​Ladies Dormitory" / "Lane Hart Hall" 1883 - 1899 - 1983
        • Bethany College "Old Main" 1887-1968 >
          • Lydia's and Emil's Old Main Apartments, 1920 to 1940
          • Deere's Bethany College Classes in Old Main
        • Bethany College "Messiah Auditorium" / "Ling Auditorium" / "Ling Gymnasium" 1895 - 1946
        • Bethany College "Swedish Pavilion" 1904
        • Bethany College "​Carnegie Library" / "Bethany Library" 1908 - 1980
        • Bethany College "​Bethany Academy" 1882 -- Swensson's Bethany's Beginnings
    • Deere's 1959 Interview on Rev. Dr. Carl A. Swensson (On YouTube) >
      • Rev. Dr. Carl Aaron Swensson, 1857-1904 >
        • Swensson's "Bethany Lutheran Church" and the "Augustana Lutheran Synod"
        • Swensson's Bethany's Beginnings: "The Bethany Academy of 1882"
        • Swensson's Musicians' and Singers' "Messiah", 1882 on ... >
          • Thure Olof Jaderborg
        • Swensson's Swedish Artists of the 1890s
        • Swensson's "Bethany College Museum," 1882 - 1966
      • In Memorium**Dr. Carl Aaron Swensson, 1904
    • Deere's Rev. Dr. Ernst F. Pihlblad, 1873-1943 >
      • In Memoriam**Dr. Ernst F. Pihlblad, 1943
      • Rev. Dr. Pihlblad on Bethany College, 1904 - 1941
    • Deere's Swensson's "Bethany College Museum" 1882 - 1966 >
      • Bethany College Museum Collections' New Location,1966 >
        • Articles on the Bethany College Museum Collections Move of 1966
    • Deere's Bethany College Field Trips -- Lydia's Photography, 1906-1925 >
      • Deere's Swensson's Bethany College Museum Collections >
        • Cliff Dwellers' Pottery Collection
        • Fossils Collection, "The Find"
        • Taxidermy Collection
    • Deere's Dr. Leon Lungstrom on the "Bethany College Museum"
    • Deere's Dr. Leon Lungstrom on "Three Pioneer Scientists of Swedish Descent"
    • Deere's Smithsonian Institution's Souvenir, 1904
    • Deere's 1940 Presidential Address to the Kansas Academy of Science
    • Deere's 1955 Letter to President Eisenhower re Tuttle Creek
    • Deere's Service, 1901-1966 >
      • Deere's Education & Degrees
  • "The Other Swedes"
    • Honoring them and their works . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . \\\\/ >
      • Mrs. Alma Christina Lind Swensson ~ Remembering her as Mrs. Rev. Dr. Swensson, the First Lady of Lindsborg
      • Photographer B.G. Gröndal ~ Remembering him for visually documenting Lindsborg and Bethany College in their earliest days
      • Miss Alma Luise Olson ~ Remembering her as "First Honored American Woman by Sweden" by Mrs. Elizabeth Jaderborg >
        • Remembering Miss Alma Luise Olson and her most extraordinary life at home and abroad by Ms. Karen A. Humphrey
      • Artist Birger Sandzén ~ Remembering him for "sharing his art with the world," starting "first" at Lindsborg's Bethany College >
        • Dr. & Dr. Mrs. Charles Greenough III ~ Remembering them for their gift of the Birger Sandzén Memorial Gallery
      • Artist Lester Raymer ~ Remembering him as the renown virtuoso artist and "behind the scenes" community supporter
      • Dr. Arvin W. Hahn ​​~ Remembering him for saving Bethany College from going under!​ >
        • Dr. Arvin W. Hahn (1923-2017) ~ Remembering him handing me my Bethany College Diploma on Sunday, May 26,1968
      • Dr. ​Elmer Copley ~ Remembering Bethany College's Oratorio Society Conductor who carried on "that" "Messiah" traditional excellence for 26 years, taking it to new levels >
        • Dr. Elmer Copley ~ Remembering him as the “Messiah” conductor for the Bethany College "Swedish King’s" performance, 1976 >
          • Dr. Elmer Copley ~ Remembering him as the "Messiah" conductor for the Bethany College "Centennial Celebration” performance, 1981
      • Dr. William Holwerda ( MD) ~ Remembering him at the founder of "Svensk Hyllningsfest"
      • Mrs. Elizabeth Jaderborg ~ Remembering her as the founder of the "Lindsborg Swedish Folk Dancers"
      • Mr. & Mrs. Hilding Jaderborg ~ Remembering them and their “Swedish Crafts Shop” – 65 years and 50 trips to Sweden
      • The Swedish Lindsborg Builders ~ Remembering them for the lovely homes they built
      • Dr. Greta Swenson and Mr. & Mrs. Mark Esping ~ Honoring them for founding Lindsborg's “first” "Swedish-American Folklife Institute of Central Kansas." 1986 >
        • Recognizing their Folklife Institute's "Swedish-American Heritage Center," 1996
      • Ms. Rebecca Copley ~ Honoring her as Bethany College's “first” graduate to become an International Opera Singer
      • Mr. Bruce Karstadt ~ Honoring him as a Bethany College graduate for heading up a major national Swedish American institution
      • Mrs. Becky Larson-Anderson ~ Honoring her as Bethany College's “first” woman graduate to become mayor of "Little Sweden" USA
      • Dr. Mark Lucas ~ Messiah conductor bringing the Lindsborg “Oberammergau of the Plains" to a "new" world stage
    • The Smoky Valley Writers on "The Other Swedes" ​ ~ Their Swedish American Legacy Collection >
      • Mr. Bror Carlsson and Mr. Alf Brorson from Sweden ~ Chronicling Founder Pastor Olof Olsson's missionary journey to Lindsborg from Värmland, Sweden
      • Rev. Dr. Carl Aaron Swensson ~ An author of countless Swedish & English publications, newspapers, articles and books ...
      • Mrs. Margaret Dahlquist Eddy ~ Providing the only known history on Lindsborg and Bethany College's earliest Swedish photographer, B.G. Gröndal
      • Rev. Dr. Alfred Bergin ​~ Compiling foundational Swedish Smoky Valley Augustana Lutheran settlements' histories and more
      • Dr. Emory Lindquist ~ Chronicling Swedish Augustana Lutheran Lindsborg and Bethany College
      • Mrs. Elizabeth Jaderborg [Selma Lind] ​ ~ Chronicling the Lindsborg of her day, its early histories, and more
      • Dr. Leon Lungstrom ~ Chronicling college professors and providing the "only known written" account on the Bethany College Museum
      • Ms. Karen A. Humphrey ~ Chronicling highlights of Swedish Augustana Lutheran Lindsborg and Bethany College society and culture in the earliest years
      • Mr. A. John Pearson & Mr. Kenneth Sjogren ~ Chronicling the Bethany College Presidents
      • Mr. Bill Carlson ~ Chronicling Lindsborg's earliest and later histories with a personal connection
      • Mr. Chris Abercrombie ~ Remembering him as the "historian," the SVHA president and his body of work
      • Mr. Thomas N. Holmquist ~ Chronicling key Swedish Augustana Lutheran Smoky Valley settlements other than Lindsborg
      • Rev. Eugene K. Nelson and the Bethany Home Writers ~ Chronicling the "only known written" story on the beginnings of Bethany Home
      • Smoky Valley Historical Association Members ~ Researchers, compilers and writers of " Where Did They Live? "
    • ​Smoky Valley History Research Writers Website Designers ~ Their Swedish American Legacy Websites
    • Bethany College Swedish Knights and Honored Ladies ~ Their Royal Swedish Legacy Listings
    • His Majesty, Carl XVI Gustaf, King of Sweden ~ Honoring him in Lindsborg and at Bethany College, 1976 >
      • Mr. Bill Carlson's Lindsborg's Bethany Home & the Swedish King's Visit
  • Contacts
    • For Lindsborg, 1869, CONTACT Today >
      • 2020 Christmas in Lindsborg ~ 'Welcome to Annandag Jul Worship from Sunnemo & Lindsborg"
      • 2020 Christmas in LIndsborg ~ the Ljuskröna and Apple Tree Exhibit" online presentation
    • ​For Bethany College, 1881, CONTACT Today
    • Closing Remarks & Traveling through SWEDES >
      • The Swedish American Legacy Photographs >
        • ​Lydia's Lindsborg's Photography​, ​1900 - 1925
        • Lydia's Bethany's Photography, ​1906 - 1925
Artist Lydia Sohlberg Deere

​"
He is the poet-painter of immense sun-washed spaces, of pine-crowned, luminous, gigantic rocks,
and of coloring–shifting desert sands. . . .The dreamer–painter is truly a master." 
                                                                                                 -- ​Giuseppe Pellettieri, an European art critic

                                                                                                                                                          -- Lindquist's Birger Sandzén, An Illustrated Biography

​  ​​<>  Their Legacy Art Community  <>

​Lydia's Art Professor Sandzén's Exhibition at the Babcock Gallery in New York, 1922

Whatever Sandzén exhibited in 1922 at the Babcock Gallery in New York City is unknown today.  However, what he would have chosen from would have been his paintings, water colors and drawing completed before this exhibition, some perhaps which still may be in the gallery, the Birger Sandzén Memorial Gallery, honoring his work in Lindsborg, Kansas.  Some of his oils can be found HERE, his water colors, HERE and his drawings HERE.

​Smoky River
1919
oil on board
Picture
Courtesy of the Birger Sandzen Memorial Gallery
I was so impressed by Sandzén's reputation as a serious artist in the "art world of America" in the early 20th Century, and was taken so by the art reviews of his exhibition at the New York City Babcock Gallery (known today as the City's oldest art gallery) that I had to add this additional section, just to share some of the reviews he was given during that time, as described by fourth Swedish American Bethany College president Dr.  Emory Lindquist in his 1993 book, Birger Sandzén, An Illustrated Biography.  He writes on pages 82 - 84 the following:

    "In 1922 a one-man show was held at the Babcock Gallery in New York from January 30 to February 11. The exhibition included 31 oil paintings, 20 water colors and 40 lithographs under the sponsorship of the American Scandinavian Foundation. Two people were mainly responsible for promoting this important event – Henry Goddard Leach, a longtime leader of the foundation and editor of Forum, and Christian Brinton, art critic and author. Brinton had seen some of Sandzén's work in the National Academy of Design in New York the previous year and had been greatly impressed, and he consulted Leach and William Henry Fox, director of the Brooklyn Museum, about the possibility of having a one-man show in New York. Sandzén was known to Fox through some of his paintings that had been exhibited in the Brooklyn Museum, but the first plan, to present the Sandzén exhibition at that museum, did not materialize.  C. Babcock, however, owner of an art gallery, had seen a Sandzén painting owned by Ernest Davis, a Bethany College graduate and a well-known professional singer in New York, and had been enthusiastic about it. When Brinton approached Babcock about sponsoring a Sandzén exhibition, Babcock immediately consented, waiving the normal $600 fee.  Leach provided $500 for a catalog, which Brinton agreed to write.

     "The Babcock exhibition received both praise and criticism, but with far more of the former. Henry McBride in the New York Herald observed:

           'Those who have encountered chance paintings of Birger Sandzén in the exhibitions will have a higher opinion of the artist after a visit to his show in the Babcock Galleries. … He paints with fiery, tempestuous colors quite unlike any native who has gone west to paint. As a rule the glare of the light in the Sierras and among the Rockies makes them blink, and they mix so much white into their color to get the light that by the time they get back East they give the impression that there is no color at all in the West. But Mr. Sandzén is different. He says there is more color than light. He defies the Grand Canyon to do its worst, knowing that he has more vermilion in his color box than nature can afford to spend upon sunsets….It is all very vehement, splendid and very western.'

     "A reviewer in American Art News wrote, 'Reports coming from the Middle West that Sandzén was an artist of real magnitude are more than justified by the first comprehensive exhibition of his work shown at the Babcock Galleries. To those who know Sandzén only through an occasional canvas, a surprise is in store. His work in watercolor, wood cuts, and lithographs…makes him stand out as a bigger and more rounded personality than every report made him.”  Peyton Boswell wrote in the New York American, 'Since Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico and California are the source of Sandz
én’s landscape, it is only natural that they should be big and broad and abounding in color. But he surpasses all expectations of what such landscapes should be by the vigor of his technique, the rightness of his compositions, and the gorgeousness of his color schemes that burn as brightly as the face of those many-hued lands.'  Boswell was especially impressed with the canvas Wild Horse Creek (also known as Creek at Moonrise [see Plate 21]), which held all those elements in full. 'However, Sandzén was not averse to portraying less dramatic features of the West as was evident in Moonlight, painted at Santa Fe in 1919. In The Old Homestead (1921)[see Plate 24], the painter has caught the melancholy atmosphere of the place.”

     "Lula Merrick observed in her review that “like Cezanne, he [
Sandzén] has searched for 'significant form' disregarding details and extreme realism, but with direct brushwork and a love of brilliant color has adapted nature to express artistic emotion.”  She liked especially the canvas Afterglow, painted at Manitou, Colorado, which was “brilliant, almost dazzling, with powerful trees and verdure of varied tones. . . The observer will find sentiment and poetry enveloped in the great masses of pigment. . . .  In the Black Canyon [1920] [Plate 18] is more convincing of the vastness, scintilant color and giant forms that one usually encounters in renditions of this subject because he has lived the rugged life of the locale, and has studied it in every phase. Two Cedars, [1919] shows decided simplification of design.

     "The Babcock Gallery exhibition of 1922 attracted critics from cities other than New York, and the Boston art critic of the Christian Science Monitor was favorably impressed expressing his response in interesting language:

          " [Sandzén's] pictorial array has startled New York like the banners of his ancestral Vikings.  If anyone else has had such massive vision of the scenic West, it has remained cloistered, like Sandzén's until now. Others have taken in wide horizons and have visualized mountains and plain with more or less force. Sandzén focused his powers on individual rocks, a clump of Cedars, a snowbound approach [See Plate 31], a bend in a torrential creek, with far greater effect.


         "Sandzén so touches the imagination with isolated items that held him as to rouse in the beholder something of the art that must have beset him in his wanderings. . . . Here without mistake is the wild Nordic impulse, transplanted and recharged with the old vigor in the atmosphere of western America. It has brought a breeze from the West that has not been filled here before. . . . There is no actual sweep I’ve seen in anything, but in everything the sense of suggestion is fast and profound.

    "Among critics in the West, W. G. Bowdoin wrote, 'Sandzén sees his motifs in a modern but not an ultra modern way, but he avoids, as he would a plague, any approach to the photographic idea. He carries his message with the highest confidence, which means conviction, and he does not seem to pause to find out whether his observers are for or against him. He is never hackneyed or conventional, and not having any convention to live down or hold him back, he dresses his Colorado trees and landscapes with ultra coloring and frequently with a most unusual pigment.'

     "Giuseppe Pellettieri, a European art critic who was in New York at the time of the Babcock exhibition, summed up his impression: 'Birger Sandzén is a solitary who sits on a far-off mountain peak enveloped in sunlight.  He is a Wagner driven to paint in order to express his vision. Although he is Swedish by birth and European by training, he is unique in that he is individual in method and viewpoint. He is the poet-painter of immense sun-washed spaces, of pine-crowned, luminous, gigantic rocks, and of coloring–shifting desert sands. . . .The dreamer–painter is truly a master.'

     "There were strong dissenting opinions about Sandzén’s paintings in the 1922 Babcock exhibition as well. The New York Times art critic observed that the paintings 'have brilliant and freshness and a loud, breezy cordiality of approach that immediately claim attention. . . .but sometimes concealing defects of fundamental structure, but oftener merely expressing a singularly invariable mood. . . . With all deductions made, it is a manly and personal art, still struggling between reality and imaginative generalization, but firmly founded upon the study of nature in its grander aspects.'  

"The interest of Hamilton Easter Field, art critic of the Brooklyn Eagle, had been aroused because, as he wrote, 'For two or three years past it seems to me that no account of what was going on in the art world of the Mississippi Valley was complete if it did not contain reference to Birger Sandzén.'  Field offered both praise and criticism: 'His best work is as near to being great art as any living American often gets, but he often loses his feeling, for color, for arrangement, even for the relative values of different subjects as material to paint. There are things which are not paintable; others will lend themselves to painting. Sandzén’s Rocks and Snow [1922] is thoroughly paintable, and Sandzén has known how to bring out the quality of color and the rhythm of the lines of construction magnificently [see Plate 25].' ”
For  Lydia's Sandzén's Body of Work Reviewed by N.Y.C. 1984  "American Impressionism," author William H. Gerdts , go HERE
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Swedes: TheWayTheyWere
~ restoring lost local histories ~
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*     *     * 

All color photography throughout Swedes: The Way They Were is by Fran Cochran unless otherwise indicated.
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