Anders Zorn: Some Personal Recollections

"Self-Portrait," 1889 by Anders Zorn

"Mora, where Anders Zorn was born and died, is a little village by the shores of Lake Siljan, in the heart of Calecarlia, which itself lies in the very heart of Sweden. Hills surround the lake, and the country for miles in all directions is timber land, dotted with lakes, and intersected by rivers. In this country, in the year 1860, Zorn was born. His father was a German and employed in a brewery; his mother was of old Dalecarlian peasant stock. The boy first showed his talent for drawing at school at Enkoping, and when about fifteen years of age some of his father's friends subscribed 400 kronor (21 pounds) to enable him to attend the Academy school at Stockholm.

Even in the seventies twenty-one pounds would not go far for a growing boy, but it sufficed for the school fees, and he kept himself in food by selling pencil portraits at fifteen shillings each. In later days he used to tell how his mother reproached him when, after a couple of years' study, he returned to Mora penniless. 'If you had done as I wished and gone to learn to be a tailor, you would be getting four kronor a week now!' By 1882, however, he had saved enough money to come to England, where he stayed with a friend at Richmond, Surrey. But his money was soon exhausted, and on his friend's advice he went to one of the principal dealers in the Haymarket to try and sell an oil painting - a portrait of himself. He asked sixty pounds for this, and the dealer offered three pounds. Zorn angrily left the shop and vowed never to have anything to do with art dealers again. Penniless, he boldly took a studio in Brook Street at a rental of five pounds a week; got some elegant cards printed, and soon received a commission to paint various members of the Swedish Legation. In a few months all anxiety for the future was gone.

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Anders Zorn: Some Personal Recollections" in "The International Studio, 1897.)