Anders Zorn: Sweden's Master Painter

Since there is the universal use of watercolor there is a charm and appeal to the medium but for anyone who has tried to master it, it uniquely challenging. The exhibit Anders Zorn: Sweden’s Master Painter demonstrates the Swedish artist mastery of the medium that takes one’s breath away. From the first gallery of the exhibit shows his skill from a young age in using watercolor in a representational, almost photographic manner. His work demonstrate the smooth transition of hue, value, and pigment, softening any emergent waterlines that are the mark of the medium, except where left for effect. In one piece, it describes his technique of working wet on wet, holding the pigment where he wants it so the image emerges from the paper, allowing the pigment to dry in specific areas and applying later brushstrokes to a marvelous effect. Zorn’s oil paintings are superb—comparable to Singer Sargent’s but it is his watercolors that left this watercolorist amazed.

© Castles in the Air 1885

© Clarence Barker 1885

© Summer Vacation 1886

This piece has a photographic quality to it that it does not seem to be a watercolor. The depiction of the water is stunning from the foreground waves to the distant shimmer

© Impressions of London 1890

 This piece has an impressionist feel to it, as if the painting was made during the rainstorm it depicts. 

© Revell, boulevard Clichy 1892

This flagship exhibit image demonstrates Zorn's mastery in a seemingly simple image. Notice how the hues of the skin tone and fabric blend while clouds of color depict the folds and shadows.

© Zorn and his wife 1890

The exhibit contains etchings which seem to be created with “biting parallel lines” as if he carves out the image from up and down strokes of a pen, creating textures, values, and subtleties of blacks from black ink marks.

© self-portrait in red, 1915