Inside Sandzen Winter 06

INSIDE SANDZÉN
This feature, highlighting a discovery relating to Sandzén from the archives, will be periodically updated on the website and is planned for each issue of Gallery Notes.

Many letters in the Sandzén Archives are notable for their obviously significant completeness. Others devoted to the ordinary, commonplace business of life may indeed provide helpful background and details for historians but may also include jewels tucked away like pearls in oysters. The Winter 2006 issue of Gallery Notes, distributed to all Sandzén Gallery members, includes five of these jewels in the "Inside Sandzén" column, the first of which is given below.

JEWEL I. To Margaret Sandzén Greenough from Gladys (Mrs. Nelson W.) Krehbiel of Moundridge, Kansas, a two-page, single spaced typed letter dated November 7, 1957. "Answered" is written on the envelope.

Mrs. Krehbiel's primary purpose in writing is to request a statement of value for the IRS of the prints and painting (Sunset, by Birger Sandzén, now on exhibit in the Thorsen Room of the Gallery) contributed by the Krehbiels to the Gallery. She had neglected to keep a list but remembers some of them as well as some earlier evaluations. In making comments along the way, she remembers artwork given also to Delta Delta Delta Sorority House at the University of Kansas in 1950.

"I included [Thomas Hart] Benton's 'The Fence Mender' because the tree in this particular lithograph reminded me of your father's trees. Someone once told me that Benton had said that he learned to draw trees from your father. When I mentioned this to your father, he smiled and said, 'And I learned to draw trees from the Chinese.'"