Andrée's Balloon

Dickinson studied under William Merritt Chase at New York’s Art Students League before moving to Europe, where he encountered the work of the Spanish painter El Greco. Something of El Greco’s style, with its elongated, twisting forms, is evident in Andrée’s Balloon, a painting that is typical of Dickinson’s moody, haunted landscapes. The title refers to a then-famous incident: the ill-fated 1897 expedition of Salomon August Andrée, a Swedish adventurer who tried to fly across the North Pole in a hot-air balloon. Dickinson produced this work—an imaginary rendering of the event—two years before the discovery of Andrée’s final encampment.