Anders Zorn (1860-1920) was a Swedish painter,
etcher and sculptor. Out from the Stockholm Academy in 1881, he traveled widely--London, Paris, the Balkans, Spain, Italy, USA. He made himself into an international success. Acclaimed at the 1900 Paris Universal Exhibition, he was awarded the French Legion of Honour. In Paris he was best buddies with Rodin. He kept moving and along the way painted three US Presidents.

While his early works were often brilliant, luminous watercolours, by 1887 he had switched firmly to oils. Back in Mora in Sweden, married and settled, he built a home which is now a museum dedicated to him. Zorn painted portraits, scenes depicting rustic life and customs, and female nudes. These healthy and voluptuous girls are the works that have most endured. You can see them tucked away in many of the world's great museums. They take your breath away.

In Zorn you can see lush stroking and a brilliant understanding of warm and cool light, colour-loaded shade areas, sophisticated grays and reflected light. He built simple, bold, often monochromatic or analogous colour schemes in casual compositions. Like Sargent, he had an uncanny way of rendering what was before him, making it look hasty and flawless at the same time. Some of his decentralized and happenstance views have a decided "off-screen" look.

Anders Zorn was born on his grandfather's farm in Mora and spent his childhood in the folkloristic Dalarna. His mother was a "dalkulla", as the independent women of this province are called and she worked at a brewery in Stockholm. Here she met, Leonard Zorn, a German, who fathered her son, before moving to a brewery in Helsinki.

Neither of Anders Zorn's parents had any artistic background, but Anders, early in his life, showed an aptitude to cut horses and figures in wood. He got his first Daintbox when he was staying with his mother in the archipelago of Stockholm. She was working as a maid in the home of a brewer and it was here that Anders' artistic talent was discovered.

Now the boy of simple background got powerful backing. His elementary studies were taken care of and at the age of fifteen he joined the Academy in Stockholm. He had a poor attendance record and left after a couple of years as he felt he had nothing to learn. At twenty-five he declared that he "had surpassed all predecessors and contemporary" artists.

Anders Zorn painted what he saw. He did not have any fantasy, except to sometimes beautify his female models. He had a talent to catch a movement, a figure or a face and reproduce it phenomenally. You can see this in the waves and the magical play of the water or in the discernible heat of the skin in his voluptuous models.

He was the first established artist to paint his nudes in nature and in natural light. He was clearly influenced by Jules Bastine-Lepage’s naturalist style. But he did not limit himself to nudes.He also painted conventional motives and quite with colorful settings from his native Dalarna.

Zorn lived in London between 1882 and 1885 and in Paris from 1888 to 1896. In 1882 one of his watercolors was exhibited in the Paris Salon and in 1884 he was given a place of honor at the spring exhibition of the Royal Institute of Watercolors in London, exhibiting, among other things, his famous portrait "Grandmother". From 1887 on Zorn was chiefly occupied with oil painting and etching.

Zorn spent 1893 in the United States where he was commissioner of the Swedish Art Department of the Chicago World Fair. He returned to the United States six times and left an important part of his work there, having painted and etched portraits of many prominent Americans including President Grover Cleveland and President William Taft (The White House, Washington D.C.). Zorn also painted numerous portraits in France, England, Germany and other countries and his work in this genre is generally admired for its taut composition and fine psychological description.

 

As an etcher Zorn was not only compared to Rembrandt, but according to many art critics, he surpassed the Dutch master in this genre. Zorn had a masterly technique that is especially remarkable when light or water is involved.

Anders Zorn was also an accomplished sculptor and it is his "Gustav Vasa" that greets the Vasalopp's skiers when they arrive in Mora. The skiers pass not far from Zorn's mansion where he lived and worked during the last twenty-four years of his life. The charming house containing Zorn's studio, the collection of old Dalecarlia houses nearby and the Zorn Museum with a lot of his art are all open to the public

Anders Zorn died at the age of 60 when he was still full of new ideas and projects. He was Sweden's most international artist and besides him it is really only the sculptor Carl Milles and artist Carl Larsson who have achieved similar world renown.

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