Biographies

Anders Zorn (1860 – 1920) He grew up on a farm in the village Yvraden, but moved to Enköping as a boy. There young Zorn caught his teacher’s attention with his natural artistic talents. After school he would draw for a Ms. Sahlin, who allowed Anders free experimentation to draw figures from posters and books. He produced some exquisite portraits in pencil of his classmates and views from the town of Enköping, and created some amazing woodcarvings, many of which are preserved and reside at the Anders Zorn museum in Mora. He finished school in the spring of 1875, and at the age of fifteen his new goal was set: Stockholm, and the Academy of Arts. He was a contemporary of Edvard Munch and of Max Liebermann, who was a personal friend and the subject of one of his paintings. Zorn’s interest lay above all in creating realistic likenesses in the French tradition, which he executed with his characteristically rapid technique both in his painting and with an etching needle on copper plates. His models were prominent figures of international public life. Zorn was no artistic innovator in the manner of the profoundly intense Norwegian painter Munch, he was an artist with visible leanings towards Impressionism who was active in the period leading up to Modernism and whose swiftly executed and psychologically perceptive etched portraits still hold an appeal for viewers today. In of March 17, 1910 Huntly Carter referred to “the brilliant work of Anders Zorn.” The New Age (NA 6.20:475)