Sven Birger Sandzén (1871-1954) by Charles A. Riley II from Antiques & Fine Art magazine

Although most of his works are in oil, Sandzén was also a talented printmaker and watercolorist, though they do not garner as much interest in the marketplace as his oils. While the work of many artists is either color- or line-based, Sandzén brought the skills of both, and identifying an A-list Sandzén is a matter of finding works that combine sure draftsmanship and fearless chromaticism.

'You can really see an upward trajectory in the marketplace for Sandzén's paintings,' says David Cook of David Cook Fine Art in Denver, Colorado. 'I have been selling his work for the past twenty years and it is wonderful to see that Sandzén is being rediscovered and validated, and that he is receiving the national recognition that he deserves.' Based on his experience, Cook notes, 'Buyers favor works from the late teens to twenties as these tend to be his strongest years, though I just purchased a painting from the 1940s that I feel is one of the top five Sandzén's I have ever owned.'

Nat Owings, founder of Santa Fe's Owings-Dewey Fine Art, has seen the Sandzén phenomenon mushroom in recent years. 'A lot of paintings came on the market when the prices shot up...I would say the more discerning collectors are holding out for particularly strong paintings.' Owings notes, 'It's a classic market - not all Sandzéns are created equal.' His preference? 'Anything with a moon in it - and the earlier the better, when the impasto is still rich and those bold colors are at their most dynamic.'

Chip Hosek, a collector of American paintings based in Pearland, Texas, had been looking for a major Sandzén landscape for nearly five years when, in the fall of 2006, he turned the corner at an art fair in Philadelphia and felt his pulse race. There was Twilight on Smoky Hill River, circa 1938, a later work with the moon that Hosek required and the vivid display of Divisionist technique that he admired. As Hosek observes, 'I didn't appreciate Sandzén's work until after I grasped the technique of Seurat. Only a handful of artists have the talent to transfer minuscule dots of a rainbow of colors to allow the viewer to participate in the depths and pleasure of their detail.' Hosek, whose collection of American paintings will be featured in an exhibition at the Pearl Fincher Museum of Fine Art (an affiliate of the Houston MFA) in the summer of 2009, adds, 'What I particularly admire about Sandzén is his ability to create a style of his own - you would know a Sandzén from a long way away.' Two weeks after Hosek made his acquisition, the dealer who sold him the painting called to tell him a new record had been set for Sandzén: a hefty $492,800 for Autumn Symphony (1930) sold through Santa Fe Art Auction. Four years earlier, $231,000 was paid for Mountain Cabins, Logan, Utah at a Coeur D'Alene Auction in Hayden, Idaho.