Maurice, a brilliant jack-of-all-trades!

Maurice Sand, George Sand's pampered and adored son, found Nohant the ideal setting for all his passions and research.

Educated at the age of 17 in Delacroix's studio, he learned the rudiments of painting and drawing from the famous painter. Already as a child, he enjoyed reproducing, with a certain talent, soldiers on the battlefield or on parade.

These first attempts seemed promising enough to George Sand that she decided to make her son an artist in his own right. His path seemed to have been mapped out! No doubt the exceptional destiny predicted for him by his mother weighed heavily on his shoulders. The stakes are high. All his life, Maurice tried to live up to it by experimenting with a variety of approaches.

He began by drawing and painting. He put down on paper numerous representations of landscapes, characters and scenes of life. He was unsurpassed in the creation of his travel journals, which he produced in the Balearic Islands, the New World, the South of France and the Auvergne.

The creation of this work undoubtedly brought him into direct contact with theatrical practice. To do so, he became a set designer, stage hand, puppeteer, prop maker, author and actor...

Maurice Sand brought the unjustly forgotten art of puppetry up to date. He created two theaters in Nohant: one for small wooden actors, the other for live actors . They are the talk of Nohant! Maurice carves the heads of his characters from limewood, and George dresses them. It's a shared job. Maurice is also becoming an experienced manipulator. It's a real investment for him, as he devotes so much of his time to it.

Maurice's real passion, apart from the art of puppetry, seems to be the natural sciences. He is literally fascinated by the tiny world of insects and butterflies. Very early on in his childhood, his mother had passed on to him a taste for the best that nature has to offer.

Throughout his life, he observed, collected and catalogued numerous species. He even produced a Catalogue raisonné des lépidoptères du Berry et de l'Auvergne , which attracted the attention of the French Entomological and Geological Societies. His preference was for butterflies, so much so that he began breeding them at Nohant. He was fascinated by the mutation of the caterpillar into a chrysalis and finally into a lepidoptera that takes flight. He devoted a magnificent book to them, entitled Le Monde merveilleux des papillons (The Wonderful World of Butterflies ), in which he reproduced with talent and precision the many varieties with their multiple shapes and colors.

Maurice also has a passion for the supernatural. This approach is very present in several of his novels and even in some of his puppets. The fantastic often permeates many of his research projects. Yet he remains convinced that science is the only certainty for the man of progress. With talent and obstinacy, he weaves a thread between art and science. In this, his vision remains singular.

Maurice told his sister Solange, shortly before his death: