Paintings, Drawings, Sculpture

George Sand french , 1804 – 1876 . Landscape with Mountains and Lakes ( Paysage avec montagnes et lacs )

1876 Gouache and watercolor on paper 6 1 ⁄ 8 x 9 ¼ inches ( 15 . 6 x 23 . 5 cm) Inscribed on the reverse by Aurore Sand, great-grand daughter of the artist “Peint par George Sand 1876 ” George Sand (born Amantine-Lucile-Aurore Dupin) was France’s most famous 19 th century female writer. She produced a large number of novels and plays, a massive two-volume autobiography, stories, essays, and articles—and published them all under the male pseudonym of George Sand. Sand or the “Good Lady of Nohant” as she was called after the town outside Paris where she lived on the family estate, was also the famous lover of Chopin, with whom in 1838 she travelled arduously to Mallorca in search of a cure for his ill health. Indeed most of the notable artistic figures of the day became Sand’s friend and/or lover: Franz Liszt, Flaubert, Balzac, Baudelaire, Sainte-Beuve, Alfred de Vigny, Chateaubriand, and Zola, along with writers from other countries, Heinrich Heine, Henry James, Browning (and his wife), Dostoevsky, and Turgenev. Painters were also part of her circle as well, especially Eugène Delacroix who visited Nohant regularly and made numerous works there. Sand participated in a wide range of activities: journalistic, political, theatrical, and literary. In the early 1870 s, near the end of a life filled with artistic production, Sand became inspired by a certain method of applying watercolor which