Anders
Zorn

Anders Leonard Zorn (Swede. Anders leonard zorn; February 18, 1860,
Mura, Kopparberg, Sweden - August 22, 1920, Mura, Kopparberg, Sweden) - famous Swedish painter, graphic artist and sculptor. He had a great influence on the development of Russian art - in his time, the Russian Tsorny was called Valentin Serov, Konstantin Korovin and many others.
Features of the artist Anders Zorn: Zorna is characterized by a sweeping manner, a large stroke and deep insight into the character of the model, which made him one of the most popular portrait painters of his time and allowed Zorn to be considered “his” among the impressionists and among adherents of the old school realism.
Famous paintings by Anders Zorn: "Mrs. Walter Rathbone Bacon", "Dalarni girls in the bath", "Our daily bread".

Among the virtues of the Swedish artist Anders Zorn never had moderation. He breathed deeply, took from life all that she could offer him, and sometimes a little beyond that. He saved no money, no paint, no power. If Zorn danced, then till you drop. If you drank, then until morning roosters.

His brush was light. He, in general, was given a lot of things easily. For example, Zorn surprisingly quickly found a common language with various people - millionaires, kings, presidents, peasants, maidservants (especially pretty ones). He loved and knew how to live. That must have been his secret: Zorn’s canvases are not just full of life, they are splashing it, infecting them with the desire to live around.

A few dollars more

Anders Zorn was born in 1860 in the suburb of Mur in the Swedish province of Dalarna. His father, a local brewer, was not married to his mother, and Anders practically did not know him. He grew up on a family farm that belonged to his mother’s parents, combining his studies with hard peasant labor. Anders showed no interest in any sciences and studied rather badly. However, already in elementary school his artistic gift became noticeable: the young man deftly carved wooden figures, and his mother expected that he would become at least a cabinet maker.

At 15, Anders Zorn enrolled at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm, and four years later - at the Academy itself. Against expectations, the sculpture is not too fascinated. After the exhibition Egron LundgrenZorn visited in 1876, he fell ill with watercolor (1, 2, 3).

To make ends meet in hungry student days, Anders Zorn wrote to order. So he met Emma Lamm - a girl from a wealthy Jewish family, whose portrait was ordered to him in 81st. Emma was well educated, she spoke several languages, had exquisite manners, and had a keen interest in art. In the same year, Anders and Emma got engaged. The engagement was a secret: Emma Lamm was not sure that her relatives - textile kings and hereditary snobs - would be delighted with a relationship with a poor artist, and bastard, too.

Over time, it turned out that Emma made the right bet. Zorn became a big celebrity - first in Stockholm, then in London, Paris, Russia and the United States. Over the years, his fame and his fees grew steadily. He regularly received medals at the most prestigious exhibitions, but much more important was the fact that Zorn was a fashionable artist. Infrequent case: the demand for it in life was higher than after death. Millionaires, presidents, members of royal families and socialites - everyone wanted Anders Zorn to write them. In one of the American magazines in 1901, it was calculated that only with portraits Zorn earned 15 thousand dollars a week.

And the Oscar goes to ...

Zorn truly enjoyed his popularity. Going to Stockholm, he did not miss the opportunity to drop his wife (and especially her arrogant relatives) with the provincial spontaneity: "Oscar asked me to write his portrait", I mean King Oscar II of Sweden. Moreover, Zorn never experienced reverent trembling before noble customers. He persuaded the same Oscar II to abandon orders and parade uniform, explaining that he is interested in character, not gilded trinkets. Arrogant Rockefeller, who promised Zorn a dollar more than he paid President Taft refused altogether. When Savva Mamontov asked why Zorn had not made a single button on his portrait, he replied: “I am an artist, not a tailor”. This was not a drop of arrogance. Zorn was really interested in characters, not buttons or orders — it was this interest that made his characters alive, and Zorn himself was an incredibly sought-after portraitist.

Its among their own

It must be said that the name Zorn was breathed with not only gallery owners and wealthy customers - colleagues appreciated it no less. About him with admiration expressed James Whistler and the main competitor in the portrait genre - John Singer Sargent. The main geographical foci of "tribute to worship" were, perhaps, the United States and Russia. Suffice it to say that Russian art critics reproached for “corornism” and Korovinand Serovand Arkhipovaand Malyavinaand many others.

In 1897, Zorn came to Russia. In Moscow I went to see Chaliapin and to Tretyakov's gallery. In St. Petersburg, he showed 27 works at an exhibition of Scandinavian artists organized by Diaghilev and, laughing with satisfaction in his luxurious mustache, looked how Repin toasts to "Paganini painting" and "the first virtuoso artist in Europe" at the banquet that Diaghilev and Mamontov threw in honor of Zorn*. Also in St. Petersburg, Zorn gave a session of writing nudes at the Academy of Fine Arts - hitting the audience with speed, energy of writing, a small amount of paint and a huge wide brush. By this time, that swift and sweeping manner, for which Zorn would be counted as an Impressionist, was already fully formed.

Konstantin Korovin, who was friends with Zorn, recalled how they were once invited to Prince Golitsin, the then governor of Moscow:

“At a large round table guests arranged tea.

“Now this painting has gone,” one lady said. - Horror! All strokes and strokes, nothing can be understood. Awful. I recently saw an exhibition in Petersburg. They said it was impressionists. A haystack is drawn, and imagine, blue ... Impossible, terrible. We have hay, and I think it's green everywhere, isn't it? And he has blue! And with brush strokes, brush strokes ... Famous, they say, impressionist painter, French **. This is a terrible thing! You are here well, that is not an impressionist, I hope we don’t have them, and thank God.

I look - Zorn blinks somehow.

- Yes. But also Velazquez "Impressionist, madam," he said.
- Really? - the ladies were surprised.
- Yes, and he (Zorn pointed at me) is an impressionist.
Dear to the house, Zorn asked me:
- This is the highest light? Is it the highest light?
“Yes,” I say.
- How strange.
Zorn was silent. And the next day, in the morning, he packed his bags and went to his place, to Sweden. ”.

Immorally stable

If there was something that eclipsed the glory of the famous Cornish portraits, then it is his countless nudes (1, 2, 3). Looking at these sunny cheerful, impregnated with eroticism and sensuality of canvas, it is hard not to ask a certain question. The answer is quite obvious: no, Anders Zorn was definitely not holy. He loved to draw naked women. And he himself also loved these women - Zorn would hardly have achieved such outstanding results if his moral principles were more stable.

From the side of marriage, Anders and Emma Zorn seemed a monolith: they traveled together, appeared in public together and invariably returned home. They have been partners for many years. However, the idyll had a different bottom. Some biographers believe that in the second half of the nineteenth century, the outskirts of the city of Mura were swarming with illegitimate babies. Their mothers always told the local priest that they did not know who the father was. And at baptism - depending on the gender - they wanted to name the child Anders or Andrea.

Emma Zorn was a patient woman and preferred not to rock the boat. She put up with Anders' irrepressible temperament, while it was about maidservants and peasant women. However, at least once she felt a real threat when Zorn seriously became interested in Emily Bartlett - a thoroughbred socialite with whom he met in Paris. Relationships that lasted several years, were not a secret to Emma. Preserved photo in which she playing pool with his opponent. The marriage stood up and this time - this party Emma won.

Zorn's liking for his thirst was similar to his. Together with Albert Engström - a famous cartoonist, loyal friend and devoted companion - Zorn made quite epic booties. According to a popular legend, one of them even ended with an immediate purchase of a tavern, from which Zorn and Engstrom were trying to expose because of the dawn.

When a referendum on prohibition was held in Sweden in 1922, Albert Engström painted a posterwhere he depicted a glass of vodka, a bottle of beer and boiled crayfish - a traditional buffet during the "cancer week" in August. Angstrom on the poster angrily pointed to the delicious red crayfish and proclaimed: “Cancers require these drinks. You must refuse them if you vote in favor. Opponents of Prohibition defeated by a margin of 2%. Alas, Engstrom could not share the joy of victory with an old comrade. By that time, Zorn had been dead for two years.

Long way home

From the moment he entered the Academy, Anders Zorn lived a double life. No, it's not about his many novels and not about how the realist got on with the impressionist. As a student, he lived in the fall and winter in Stockholm, and with the onset of spring he returned home to a remote province. And he turned from a gentleman of the artistic profession into a bushman, a simpleton, a bogus, whose interests are cosmically far from salon disputes about art. Zorn adored this simple rural life. And becoming an international celebrity, did not change this tradition: no matter how they applauded the capitals of the world to him, he always returned home. True, when Zorn rejected the portrait of Rockefeller, one of the reasons was personal dislike. But the main thing - Zorn wanted to have time to go home to Midsummer - the Mid-Summer Festival, which he tried not to miss.

He was very attached to his homeland (especially to a small one), to his mother, to his roots. American impressionist Edward Simmons described in his autobiography how Zorn constantly bought expensive coats and fur coats in European capitals and sent them to his mother - in the end, she had amassed a full chest and could hardly close the lid. Zorn did not think about where the old woman living in the wilderness would go in fashionable furs. He was an artist, not a tailor.

As early as 1888, Zorn acquired a piece of land in Mura and brought his old grandfather’s house into which he grew up. Gradually expanding, the old house turned into a manor Zorngorden. Here, Anders Zorn equipped one of his workshops. Here, in Mura, he died at the age of 60.

After the artist’s death, the estate was transformed into a museum by the efforts of Emma Zorn. Today, there are objects of art that Zorn has collected all his life, and, of course, pictures of Zorn himself. Paintings that scatter light, energy and life. Pictures, having seen which, someone, for certain, will want to name the child Anders or Andrea.


Notes:

* There is a misconception about portrait of Savva Mamontov Zorn from the collection of the Pushkin Museum - as if it was painted during the artist's visit to Russia in 1897, at one of the public painting sessions that he arranged here. In fact, the portrait of Mamontov was created a year earlier, in Paris. And in Russia, Zorn wrote to the collector and philanthropist Princess Maria Tenishev. Diaghilev wrote in a letter to Benoit: "One of these days I am waiting for Zorn'a, Thaulow and Edelfelt... Imagine the first two will stay with me! Princess [Tenisheva] ordered Zorn'u portrait ". This portrait of Zorn never finished.


** Speech, of course, about Claude monet and an exhibition of French impressionists, which took place in Moscow in 1895. This exhibition, by the way, had a serious impact on the further development of art. One lawyer, having visited her, decided to give up jurisprudence and went to Germany to study painting. It was Wassily Kandinsky. He was also impressed by Monet’s “Haystack” at the Impressionist exhibition in Moscow: namely, the picture (this is probably one of the two this or this), which angered and delighted him with the fact that he could not understand what is shown on it until he looked into the catalog.


Author: Andrey Zimoglyadov