Background

Anders Zorn was born on February 18, 1860, in Mora, Dalarna County, Sweden. He was the son of Grudd Anna Andersdotter, usually called Mona, "mother" in Mora dialect. Her family were farmers and she contributed to the family's income by working elsewhere. She had seasonal work in a brewery in Uppsala where she met the German brewer Leonhard Zorn, who became her son's father. Anders Zorn never met his father who died in Helsinki in 1872.

Education

Anders Zorn studied at a local school till the age of twelvw, before enrolling at a secondary grammar school in Enköping in 1872. He received his formal training at the Royal Academy of Art in Stockholm from 1875 to 1880, where he studied sculpture as well as painting and engraving. As a young boy, he had shown an unusual artistic ability and attention was drawn to the horses and human figures he carved in wood. He planned to become a sculptor but soon painting prevailed. He choose water colours, a technique which was rather uncommon at the time and this became his main technique until around 1887.

Career

In 1880 at the exhibition of art students' work, Anders Zorn made a name for himself with the watercolour "In Mourning". A number of well off people in Stockholm had already become aware of Zorn's talents and had commissioned portraits from him. From 1881 to 1885, he traveled widely in France, Spain, and England in addition to visiting Constantinople. Between 1888 and 1896 he lived in Paris but made a practice of returning to Sweden in the summer.

During the 1890s, he started painting the nudes that he would become renowned for. His nudes were primarily female figures, depicted outdoors. He used the plein air painting technique, effortlessly blending the female forms with their surroundings. In 1896, after eight years in Paris, Anders with his wife moved home to Sweden and Mora. Zorn’s international connections did not cease to be active.

Until the First World War, he found himself travelling every year, typically in the spring. He continued to receive new portrait commissions and regularly took part in exhibitions in France, Germany and the United States. In a large solo exhibition at the Galeries Durand-Ruel in Paris in 1906, he was hailed as one of the greatest artists of his time and was compared with the acclaimed Spaniard Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida and the American John Singer Sargent. During the last years of his life, Zorn’s health deteriorated quickly, partially the consequence of his intensely lived life.

Achievements

• Anders Zorn was one of the most prominent Sweden artists. He was chiefly known for his paintings of figures, especially nudes, in out-of-door settings.
  
  Anders gained international acclaim for his skillfully executed portraits, and became known for his ability to capture the individual characteristics of his subjects. His portrait commissions included three United States presidents: Grover Cleveland, William H. Taft, and Theodore Roosevelt.
  
  In addition to being a painter, he was also a skilled etcher. Over his career he produced 289 etchings, many of which including the portraits of Ernest Renan, August Rodin, and August Strindberg became very well-known.
  
  In 1920 he and his wife established the Swedish literary Bellman Prize.
  
  The Zorn Museum, which was established by his wife, has the world’s largest collection of works by artist Anders Zorn. A selection of watercolors, oil paintings, sculptures, drawings, and etchings are always on display. His works are also a part of the permanent collections of institutions such as the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Courtauld Institute in London, the National Museum in Sweden.

Works

More photos

• painting

  • Portrait of AgusHolzer

    1879

  • White Lilies

  • In the Harbour of Algiers

    1887

  • Home Tunes

    1920

  • Self-portrait

    1882

  • Self-Portrait

  • Girl in an Orsa Costume

    1911

  • Way to the church

  • Castles in the Air

    1885

  • Portrait of Emma in the Paris studio

    1894

  • My Model and My Boat

    1894

  • Oscar II

  • In Top Capu

    1885

  • The Tub

    1888

  • Mona

    1911

  • A Musical Family

    1905

  • Portrait of Fru Lisen Samson, nee Hirsch, Arranging Flowers at a Window

    1881

  • A Girl from Mora

  • Sunbathing girl

  • Against The Current

    1919

  • Sappho

    1917

  • Joseph-Ernest Renan

    1892

  • Women Bathing in the Sauna

    1906

  • Stockholm

    1881

  • Kaikroddare

    1886

  • In Scotland (Mrs. Symons)

    1887

  • The Toast

    1893

  • Gustav V

    1909

  • Bust

    1916

  • Mona

    1911

  • Cabin

    1917

  • Mrs Symons

    1888

  • A premiere

    1888

  • Coquelin Cadet

    1889

  • A Swedish Madonna

    1900

  • Sensitive to cold

    1894

  • Effect of night

    1895

  • Self-Portrait With Faun And Nymph

  • The Mora Fair

    1892

  • On the Sands

    1916

  • Antonin Proust

  • President Grover Cleveland

    1899

  • Emma Zorn, reading

    1887

  • Walk

    1908

  • A Toast in the Idun Society

    1892

  • Queen Sophia

  • The bedroom

  • After the bath

    1895

  • In Werner's Rowing Boat

    1917

  • The cousins

  • Ernest Cassel

    1886

  • A Portrait Of a Christian De Falbe

  • William H. Taft

    1911

  • Mrs Bacon

    1897

  • A Fisherman

    1888

  • A Portrait Of The Daughters Of Ramon Subercasseaux

  • Mrs Potter Palmer

    1893

  • The Little Brewery

    1890

  • Portrait Of Edith Palgrave Edward In Her London Residence

  • Lappings of the waves

    1887

  • A Portrait of Jean Baptiste Faure

    1891

  • A Kitchen Maid

    1919

  • Hugo Reisinger

    1907

  • Nude woman arranging her hair

    1907

  • Red Stockings

    1887

  • Margit

    1891

  • Ida

    1905

  • Self-portrait in a wolfskin

    1915

  • In the studio

    1896

  • A Woman in a Forest

    1907

  • Portrait of Max Liebermann

    1891

  • Wallpaper Factory

    1884

  • The widow

  • Bed on the loft

  • Madame Clara Rikoff

  • Dance in Gopsmor

    1906

  • Mrs Walter Bacon

    1891

  • Opal

    1891

  • Breakfast In The Green

  • Summer Entertainment

    1886

  • Self-portrait with a model

    1896

  • Firelight

  • The Waltz

    1891

  • In mourning

    1880

  • Fish market in St Ives

  • The sisters Schwartz

  • The two

    1916

  • Emma and Mouche, the dog

    1902

  • The Guitar

    1895

  • At the Piano

    1900

  • Hins Anders

    1904

  • Impressions of London

    1890

  • Gunnlod

    1893

  • In my Gondola

    1894

  • Christmas Morning Service

    1908

  • Martha Dana

  • The Painter Bruno Liljefors

    1906

  • Our daily bread

    1886

  • Reflexions

    1889

  • Portrait of Elizabeth Sherman Cameron

    1900

  • View from the Ship Island pier

    1890

  • Paul Verlaine

    1895

  • Surveying the Vista

    1886

  • Out

    1888

  • Baking the Bread

    1889

  • Waltz

    1891

  • Vicke

    1918

  • In the woods

    1893

  • Helga

    1917

  • Red sand

    1903

  • The Battleship baltimore In Stockholm Harbor

    1890

  • A premiere

    1888

  • In Wikstrom Studio

    1889

  • Lisen Lamm

  • Neglected

    1884

  • Studio Idyll

    1918

  • A Female Nude

  • Carl Snoilsky

    1888

  • Frances Cleveland

  • Midsummer dance

    1903

  • Guitar player

    1900

  • Smoking woman

    1907

  • Old soldier

    1911

  • Love Nymph

    1885

  • Hamburg Harbour

    1891

  • Study of Landscape in Richmond

    1882

  • Motherhood

  • Self-portrait in red

    1915

  • Lucky with the ladies

    1884

  • Portrait Of Mrs Eben Richards

    1899

  • Nude under a fir

    1892

  • Ols Maria

    1918

  • Spetssom

    1894

  • Mona

    1898

  • Girl knitting

    1901

  • Omnibus

    1893

  • Zorn and his Wife

    1890

  • Misses Solomon

  • Emma Lamm in a straw hat

    1881

• sculpture

  • Mona

    1889

  • The Broken Pot

  • Grandmother

    1892

  • Nymph and faun

    1895

  • Gustav Vasa

Interests

• Artists

  Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn

Connections

In the autumn of 1885, Anders Zorn married Emma Lamm. She came from a well-to-do jewish merchant family with strong cultural interests. The Zorn couple secretly got engaged while they waited for him to gain a secure livelihood.

Father:

Leonhard Zorn

Mother:

Grudd Anna Andersdotter

Spouse:

Emma Amalia Zorn

References

• Anders Zorn: Sweden's Master Painter This handsome volume provides a thorough introduction to the artist and his works, from portraiture to landscapes and his famous nudes. Four illustrated essays are accompanied by a chronology, selected bibliography, an exhibition checklist, and an index.
  2013
• Anders Zorn: 300 Plates
  2016
• Anders Zorn: A European Artist Seduces America The catalogue features fifty of Zorn's works, such as Omnibus I, for which Zorn won a prize at the 1892 Salon in Paris, and Ice Skater (1898), which has never before left Sweden, combining for the first time major pieces from American collections with those of Europe, such as Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence; the National museum, Stockholm; Zornmuseet, Mora; and Göteborgs Konstmuseum, Gothenberg.
  2013
• Anders Zorn: 130 Master Etchings
  2015
• Anders Zorn:123 Portrait Drawings & Paintings
  2018