Wikimedia Commons.Įven in his early paintings such as The Letter from 1882, he captures the complex folds and textures of fabrics and garments superbly. Anders Zorn (1860–1920), The Letter (1882), watercolour on paper, 26 x 35 cm, Private collection. Like his contemporaries Joaquin Sorolla and John Singer Sargent, his virtuoso style always looks so effortless, and Zorn did attract some criticism for what appeared to be too casual for some. Apparently painted briskly but without effort, his loose brushstrokes, use of reserved space and white gouache for brilliant highlights, and wet-in-wet at the right are exemplary. Painted when Zorn was in Spain, this Beggar in Seville (1881) demonstrates his skill with watercolour.

Anders Zorn (1860–1920), Beggar in Seville (1881), watercolour on paper, 38 x 22 cm, Private collection. One of his watercolour double-portraits from the latter city was accepted for the Salon in Paris in 1882, where it started to develop his international reputation. He spent six months there, mainly in the cities of Seville and Cádiz. Inspired by the life and work of the older Swedish artist Egron Lundgren (1815-1875), Zorn decided to travel, and headed first to London and Paris before going on to Spain, where he arrived in late September 1881. He met and later married Emma Lamm, whose upper middle class background must have brought Zorn clients.

As the painter was establishing himself as a portraitist, the following year he came into conflict with the conservative attitudes of the Academy’s Director, and dropped out of his studies. Zorn’s breakthrough also came early, in 1880 when King Oscar II of Sweden was among those wanting to purchase his work. Among his friends there was the young Bruno Liljefors, who was to become one of the finest wildlife artists in Europe. It was there that he discovered that watercolour painting was his forte, and he quickly established himself a reputation as a brilliant painter. He left the beautiful rolling lakelands of Dalarna for the crowded capital. While he was there, Zorn must have showed artistic talent, as in 1875, at the age of only fifteen, he won himself a place to study sculpture at the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm. His itinerant father died in 1872, providing his son with a small legacy which enabled education at a grammar school in the distant town of Enköping. Zorn was brought up on the family farm near the village of Mora, in Dalarna, central Sweden. The story of the career of Swedish artist Anders Zorn (1860–1920) isn’t quite rags-to-riches, but he was born to an unmarried mother, and never even met his father, a Bavarian brewer who met her when she was doing seasonal work in a brewery in Uppsala.

Anders Zorn by Olaf Danielson