Sand2023

purely abstract. These works seem to have developed in an almost instinctive fashion, though they have something in common with the ink blot drawings of Victor Hugo, another writer-artist hybrid. Sand made these remarkable drawings during the last two decades of her life, but the majority were produced during the 1870s. This was a period of relative calm and stability, as her tumultuous love affairs, her endless toil and productivity as a writer, her at-times disillusioning interventions in the world of politics, and her tragic losses—especially the death of Chopin— were now behind her. Sand spent her days at Nohant, enjoying the company of her grandchildren, puttering in the garden, creating amateur theatrical productions with her son, Maurice, and working on her dendrites and taches . These unsigned drawings were made purely for her own private satisfaction, not for financial gain: unlike her novels she was under no contract or pressure to produce them for a profit. Their small scale allowed her to bind them together in albums for her granddaughters, like precious keepsakes or souvenirs. Indeed, Sand often added the miniscule figures of Aurore and Gabrielle and their beloved dog, Fadet, to her dendrites , usually at the base of the landscape, as if to emphasize the intimate, familial context of their production.

opposite: Wildflowers (detail, cat. no. 9)