Our Daily Bread – watercolor by Anders Zorn 1886

Description

Anders Leonard Zorn (18 February 1860 – 22 August 1920) was a Swedish painter. He attained international success as a painter, sculptor, and etching artist.[1][2] Among Zorn’s portrait subjects include King Oscar II of Sweden and three American Presidents: Grover Cleveland, William H. Taft, and Theodore Roosevelt. At the end of his life, he established the Swedish literary Bellman Prize in 1920.

Biography
Zorn was born and raised on his grandparents’ farm in Yvraden, a hamlet near the village of Utmeland in the parish of Mora, Dalarna.[3] He studied until the age of twelve in the school at Mora Strand before progressing in the autumn of 1872 to a secondary grammar school in Enköping.

From 1875 to 1880, Zorn studied at the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts in Stockholm, where he amazed his teachers with his talent.[2] Members of the Stockholm Society approached him with commissions. In early 1881, Zorn met Emma Lamm, whose background was quite different from his. Emma Lamm was from a wealthy Jewish merchant family. She was interested in art and culture and, after a long engagement, they were married in a civil ceremony in October 1885.

Zorn traveled extensively, to London, Paris, the Balkans, Spain, Italy and the United States; he became an international success and one of the most highly regarded painters of his era.[1] It was primarily his skill as a portrait painter that gained Zorn international acclaim, based principally upon his incisive ability to depict the individual character of his model.[1] His subjects included three American Presidents: Grover Cleveland, William H. Taft and Theodore Roosevelt.

Honors
At the age of 29, he was made a Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur at the Exposition Universelle 1889 Paris World Fair.[4]

Paintings
While his early works were often brilliant, luminous watercolors, by 1887 he had switched firmly to oils. Zorn was a prolific artist. He became an international success as one of the most acclaimed portrait painters of his era. His sitters included three American Presidents, nobility, the Swedish king and queen and numerous members of high society. Zorn also painted portraits of family members, friends, and self-portraits. Zorn is also noted for his nude paintings.[1] His fondness of painting full-figured women gave rise to the terms Zornkulla or dalkulla, an unmarried woman or girl from Dalarna, as the women were called in the local dialect of the region where Zorn lived.

The paintings have the freedom and energy of sketches, using warm and cool light and shade areas[1] with contrasting areas of warm and cool tones, and an understanding of color contrasts and reflected lights. Zorn’s accomplished use of the brush allows the forms and the texture of the painted subject to reflect and transmit light. In addition to portraits and nudes, Zorn excelled in realistic depictions of water, as well as scenes depicting rustic life and customs.