ANDERS ZORN

Evening Post, Volume CXXI, Issue 20, 24 January 1936, Page 3

ANDERS ZORN

HIS JOUKNEY TO

FORTUNE

TRIAL TO PROFESSORS There is to be found in the work of the greater etchers of whatever period or nationality a distinctive manner by which it may be identified without recourse to catalogues or signatures, says a writer in the Melbourne "Age." The brand of the individual which shows in a Whistler or Brangwyn print is obvious, and in a measure personal, as. expressing the temperament and mental attitude of the artist, indeed, there is in the individuality of the bitten line something comparable to that of hand writing, as an index of character, and in no case is this more apparent than in that of the Swedish painter-etcher and sculptor, Anders Zorn.

This artist was born at Stockholm in 1 1860, his father being Leonard Zorn, a German master brewer. One mentally visualises a master brewer as being a man of robust personality, and of a masterful yet genial disposition, which could find delight in the strenuous as well as the softer things of life, and if the elder Zorn possessed such characteristics he without question passed them on to his son Anders, .who from the first showed indications of mental alertness and strength of purpose, together with a capacity for appreciating and using such goods as the gods provided. His early years were passed at a paternal farm near the small Dalecarlian town of Mora, where he grew up strong and hardy, and showed, as was remembered in later years, a precocious attitude for drawing. His general education was-not neglected, and three years, between 1872 and 1875, spent at the Enroping Grammar School provided a useful grounding in the rudiments of knowledge. SENT TO STOCKHOLM. Anders was the type of boy who attracts attention and makes friends, and a Stockholm manufacturer named Anton Bolinder, who must have been a person of penetration, discovered in the boy the potentialities of a good artist, and provided means for him to go to Stockholm to study sculpture. At that early stage he had no clearly defined plan of action beyond developing his natural gift as a draughtsman—an inconspicuous figure in the art life of a great city, but one which, even at that tender age, embodied the elements of revolt, as later developments were to prove. His drawings from the antique came under the notice of Professor John Boklund, art director of the Stockholm Academy of Arts, where the boy had entered as a student in the preparatory school. At this time in other parts of Europe and in England art was on the up grade. In England the rebel Whistler had shaken to its foundations the academic teachings of John Ruskin, while in France the impressionist movement was busy wiping out old-established traditions in art, but the Swedish professors such as Boklund and his staff of teachers remained steeped in an atmosphere of dreary conventions, which could yield to the aspiring student neither present advancement nor hope for the future. A young artist of less fixed opinions than Anders Zorn might have succumbed to the weight of such adverse conditions, but the will to achieve which was to prove

a dominating factor in his career prevailed.

He did not believe in the professors, and they in turn viewed him with disfavour as a disturbing and revolu- [ tionary element. Latterly, his attendance at the school became intermittent, and when he left the old academy in 1881 it was without regret and unregretted. WIDER AMBITIONS. Despite these disagreements, however, his work as a painter had found him some admirers in Stockholm, and, with four thousand crowns saved, he left Sweden, via Paris and Spain, for London, full of hope and ambition, both destined to meet with ample fulfilment.

His first lessons in etching were from his countryman, Axel Haig, and; though there is no sign in his work of the manner of his teacher, such as shows in etchings by pupils of Rembrandt, he profited greatly by his connection with Haig, and his'first print of note is a vivid portrait of tnat artist, which ranks with his portrait of Christian Aspelin, produced in the same year.

During a fairly long residence in London, the artist worked chiefly in water colours, and he did not take up etching with really serious intention till about 1889, when, though he was rapidly graining a world reputation as a portrait painter, the plate and needle claimed increasingly more of his time. Constitutionally and temperamentally a rover, the early portion of his life, after leaving Stockholm, was largely spent—with London as a .base —in working expeditions to Spain, France, Italy, the North African coast, and the Near East as far as Constantinople, nor did his marriage to Emma Lamm in any way lessen these activities into which the wife entered with as great a zest as Zorn himself and proved a great help in tiding over difficulties and making rough places smooth. In 1893 the artist made his first journey to America as Commissioner to the exhibition of Swedish work held in Chicago.

By this time Zorn hnd become famous as an etcher, and during the year spent in the States this phase of his art gained a wide popularity, one Chicago connoisseur, Charles Deering, securing an entire collection of prints. A superb draughtsman, Anders Zorn spared no pains in the production of his plates from the first touch of the needle to the final printing. He excelled in portraiture, and in his wide social and professional range of acquaintance found many notable sitters, such as Ernest Renan and Anatole France. These he generally treated with a free, forceful line, yielding somewhat the effect of a vigorous pen drawing, but in his nude (chiefly outdoor) studies his technique varied considerably, and contrary to the usual custom of etchers, he made a free use of cross-hatching in dealing with the sunlit curves and modulations of the body. This method, however, though a convention, he employed with such delicacy and judgment* as to justify any use he made of it. Finding their ugly duckling turn out a swan, the pundits of the Stockholm Academy sought reconciliation, and offered medals and other honours as amends for past misunderstandings, but it was not till after his final return to Sweden and a year before his death that any real reconciliation took place. CITIZEN OF THE WORLD A citizen of the world, it is recorded of him that during the return voyage from the States, a Frenchman at. the ship's table, addressing him, said:— "Vous etes Suedois?" to which he replied:—"Npn, Je suis Zorn." Yet, in his latter years, world famous and rich in material things, he and his wife

returned to Sweden to live and work among their own people. They settled first in Dalecarlian Mora, but latterly occupied a house in Stockholm, richly furnished in the antique manner, and hung with old Flemish and Gothic tapestries, and here he painted and etched portraits of many notable people, and established a centre of art such as had never been known under the old academic regime.

In 1919 his health began to fail, and he died in the following year at Morna, lamented not only by the Swedish people, but by the entire artistic world.