This biography from the Archives of AskART:
|  "Anders Zorn was born the 18 February, 1860 at Mora, in Dalame, the son
of a brewer from Bavaria and a Dalecarlian woman. He was brought
up as a peasant boy on the banks of Lake Siljan, and when but a small
child gave evidence of his passion for art by carving wooden figures,
which he colored with berry juice.
At the age of fifteen he went to Stockholm. Though he first studied
sculpture at the Academy of Arts, it was as a watercolor painter that
he made his initial mark. As early as 1881 he began to travel,
spending considerable time in Spain, and later residing for some years
in London.
During the nineties he passed no little time at his home in Mora, upon
which he has lavished his most ardent love, but he has also resided in
Paris and the United States, where his breezy freshness, his spirit and
dash, his inimitable blending of rusticity and elegance, and the vigor
and healthy sensuality of his line and stroke readily found both
enthusiastic and discriminating admirers.
Zorn may sometimes be unconvincing in his painting, but when he does
succeed, he conjures up reality itself, and gives his work a definite
something which recalls Frans Hals, though Zorn never tried to learn
from the masters of either the seventeenth or the eighteenth centuries.
Technically he has chiefly aimed at giving proof of his supremacy as a painter of light and of
fleeting chromatic effects. He has endeavored to reproduce that
which he most loves — the fullness of life —and his personality' shines
forth in every line» every patch of color."
Source:
Christian Brinton, the Catalogue for the 1912 -1913
EXHIBITION of CONTEMPORARY SCANDINAVIAN ART at
New York, Buffalo, Toledo, Chicago and Boston
Submitted by M.D. Silverbrooke, Art Historian and Collector, West Vancouver, British Columbia
|
Biography from Childs Gallery:
| Anders Zorn, the celebrated painter and print-maker, rose from humble
beginnings to become a celebrated member of the European and American
upper classes. Zorn was born out of wedlock to a German brewer
and a Swedish peasant woman. He was reared in the rural Swedish
province of Dalarna, and although he later traveled extensively and
took pride in his upper-class status, he never felt at home until he
settled again in his native town of Mora in 1896. In 1893, on his
first trip to America, Zorn visited New York City en route to the
Columbian World Exhibition in Chicago (also known as Chicago’s World
Fair). The self-made artist subscribed to American values and
immediately felt welcome in America. Zorn wrote about America in
his memoirs:
“I get on well in America and with Americans. Their frank,
straightforward manner suits my nature. I’ve never really been
able to stand our urban Europeans’ ceremonious style and artificial
customs. When I first came out of Dalarna, I quickly learned that
everything I knew and valued was considered nothing, and that one
should never tell the truth about things in polite society. . . .
But the only rules of conduct that were so severely impressed on me by
my grandfather from my earliest childhood were not so tricky;
faithfulness, being true to one’s word, honesty, and punctuality,
virtues I discovered were unnecessary in the cities of Europe. . . Why
was I more than other foreigners during [my first visit to America]
closest to the elite of America and introduced in all the clubs?
Everywhere I go, I ascribe this to my grandfather, the splendid old
Mora peasant who raised me until I was twelve. . . . Over there
[in America], when they say "He’s all-right," all doors open to the
foreigner, which Europeans cannot understand. Openness, honesty,
straightforwardness, punctuality, these things are included in the
testimonial ‘He’s all-right.’ ”
While at the Chicago World’s Fair, Zorn established lasting
relationships with many friends and patrons, including Charles Deering,
Mrs. Potter Palmer, and Isabella Stewart Gardner. According to a
popular story recounted in Carrell Shaw’s essay in Anders Zorn
Rediscovered, Mrs. Gardner, captivated by Zorn’s painting Interior of an Omnibus in Paris,
turned to a man nearby and asked if it was for sale or if he knew of
the artist. That man was Anders Zorn and Mrs. Gardner replied,
“Yourself, indeed! Well, I feel sure we shall soon be enemies . .. or
else very, very fast friends. You shall come today for
tea.” This chance meeting initiated a long friendship and patron
relationship. In addition to the Omnibus oil painting, Zorn’s
outstanding portrait of Mrs. Gardner at the Palazzo Barbaro in Venice,
and an impressive collection of Zorn prints are currently on view at
The Gardner Museum in Boston. In November of 1893, the Frederick
Keppel Gallery on East 16th Street in New York City held the first
American exhibition of Zorn’s work and ignited Zorn’s popularity in
this country. As evidence of his influence in America, Zorn
portrayed three Presidents: Theodore Roosevelt, Grover Cleveland and
William Taft.
Not only did Zorn love America, but also America loved him, and
continues to do so. The artist was one of the most actively
collected printmakers of the early 20th Century, fetching extremely
high prices at auction and was often ranked among the world’s most
highly-esteemed printmakers. In 1920, a Zorn print from a
well-known New York collection brought $3,900, compared to a premium
Rembrandt at the same sale that sold for $3,100. In 1928, the Boston Herald
published an article highlighting the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston’s
acquisition of a collection of 110 Zorn etchings. However, by the
1950s the artist’s prints were largely neglected.
With the help of Childs Gallery, the demand for Zorn’s prints has
increased steadily since that time. In the early 1970s, the
Gallery acquired the Therese Lownes Noble collection of prints and the
Frederick Shaeffer collection of prints, each of which had substantial
holdings in Zorn. This allowed the gallery to maintain and to continue
to acquire a substantial inventory of the artist’s work, and in 1974
Childs devoted its first print letter to the artist. The
Gallery’s commitment to Zorn was demonstrated by the 1980 exhibition,
“Anders Zorn 1860-1921: An Exhibition of 75 Prints” and another show in
1984. The President of Childs Gallery, D. Roger Howlett,
encouraged Elizabeth Broun in her groundbreaking 1979 Zorn exhibition
at the Spencer Museum at the University of Kansas. That
exhibition and the extensive catalogue that accompanied it, rekindled
interest in Zorn and was followed in 1993 by “Swedish Impressionism’s
Boston Champion: Anders Zorn and Isabella Stewart Gardner” at the
Gardner Museum and a Fogg Museum at Harvard University’s exhibition. |
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