It might seem a bit odd travelling to Madrid to see an exhibition by a Scandinavian artist.... but the Swede Anders Zorn made the journey to Spain nine times in his career. He wasn't a painter we'd been familiar with, the Swedes lagging some way behind their Nordic neighbours in our art explorations; we'd been intrigued by the idea of seeing a retrospective of his work in Hamburg late last year but didn't make it, so we seized the chance to view the same show at the Mapfre Foundation in Madrid under the title Anders Zorn: Travelling the World, Remembering the Land . Zorn, who lived from 1860 to 1920, was a big name in his day, and it's easy to appreciate why from this exhibition. He had fantastic technique and worked in a broad range of genres, famed particularly for his portraiture. But he's quite difficult to pigeonhole, and as for some of his early subject matter, it really is rather sickly sweet. As the exhibition title spells out, Zorn explored the worl...
It might seem a bit odd travelling to Madrid to see an exhibition by a Scandinavian artist.... but the Swede Anders Zorn made the journey to Spain nine times in his career. He wasn't a painter we'd been familiar with, the Swedes lagging some way behind their Nordic neighbours in our art explorations; we'd been intrigued by the idea of seeing a retrospective of his work in Hamburg late last year but didn't make it, so we seized the chance to view the same show at the Mapfre Foundation in Madrid under the title Anders Zorn: Travelling the World, Remembering the Land.
Zorn, who lived from 1860 to 1920, was a big name in his day, and it's easy to appreciate why from this exhibition. He had fantastic technique and worked in a broad range of genres, famed particularly for his portraiture. But he's quite difficult to pigeonhole, and as for some of his early subject matter, it really is rather sickly sweet.
As the exhibition title spells out, Zorn explored the world but he never forgot his roots in the Swedish countryside, and it's one of his pictures of rural Sweden that's among the most striking in the show. The title is Midnight, and given how bright it is, it must be midsummer. A young woman steers her boat carefully towards the shore, whose abundant greenery is reflected in the calm water.
.jpg)
Is she about to meet someone? Or have they already met? We were inevitably reminded of another rower in a stripy shirt, the one depicted by Gustave Caillebotte in Partie de bateau just a decade or so earlier. In the game of fantasy art encounters, you'd somehow like to imagine the two meeting for a romantic assignation on the riverbank.
You don't have to wait long in this show to meet Zorn himself. Here he is, in his studio, which he had installed in a 13th-century log cabin in Mora in his native Dalarna region, where he settled in 1896. It's now part of the Zorn Museum, which has supplied many of the works in the exhibition.
.jpg)
A larger-than-life personality, you feel. Great suit, too.
.jpg)
Zorn rapidly garnered commissions and was able to travel widely. Now many aspiring artists would want to break with convention, create work to shock and outrage, tear down the old certainties. Not Zorn; he was no angry young man. He went to Spain and painted the very, very gooey A Mother's Joy. He went to England and painted the son of the Danish ambassador, Christian de Falbe, in a riot of fabric and with a panting St Bernard in the background. It's brilliantly executed but horribly tasteless (and the ambassador didn't buy it as he thought Zorn was asking too much). And luckily for you, we can't find a link to share The Nymph of Love.
However, quite a lot of his early output does stand the test of time; many small paintings are full of eye-catching angles, textures and anecdote; a cat wanders along the top of a wall behind a courting couple In the Gardens of the Alhambra, for example, and there are captivating snapshots of locations as diverse as Algiers and Clovelly. And here's another rower, a Turkish Oarsman, from Constantinople, where Anders and his wife Emma went on their honeymoon in 1885.
.jpg)
We loved the foot, apparently braced against the bottom of the picture frame.
Back in Sweden the following year, Zorn was painting during the couple's Summer Holiday at Dalarö, to the south of Stockholm. David Hockney said he found it a challenge to depict water; Zorn clearly didn't. "What seemed to particularly attract me was the play of light and reflections," he said.
.jpg)
There's a photographic quality to this painting, isn't there? And perhaps it's also somewhat reminiscent of a classic work by another Scandinavian painter, the Dane Christen Købke's View of Lake Sortedam from half a century earlier.
Water plays a major supporting role in Zorn's nudes, too. Unlike his close contemporaries Suzanne Valadon and Félix Vallotton, Zorn didn't set out for his nudes to shock. He sought to create depictions that appeared spontaneous, maintaining, we're told on the wall captions, that the desired image only emerged when the models stopped posing and acted naturally. Indeed, his nudes seem so comfortable to be undressed and at one with nature, their skin the same tone as the sandy banks.
.jpg)
We found these outdoor nudes really quite charming. Of course, the wall captions point out that these pictures "also reveal an interpretation of the female body constructed from a male perspective," which is rather stating the bleeding obvious. You can find a bit of discussion on the web about Zorn and the male gaze, but those in search of titillation at the turn of the century would surely have found a lot more satisfaction elsewhere.
We mentioned portraiture at the beginning, and it was in this genre that Zorn really made his mark. He painted the Swedish King Oscar II, as well as three American presidents, including Grover Cleveland. You can see why he was in demand; some of his women sitters in glamorous gowns approach the bravura of John Singer Sargent. Here's Elizabeth Sherman Cameron, who sat for Zorn in Paris in 1900, just before she was about to head back to Pittsburgh. It's almost like she's been caught by a photographer's flashgun, lit up as if by a lightning strike echoing that branch of a tree on the wallpaper behind her.
.jpg)
The exhibition ends back in Sweden, with Zorn returning to his roots; the concluding image is Midsummer Dance, a painting now in the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm that's often seen as an expression of Swedish national identity. It shows couples in traditional dress dancing under the midnight sun in a village near Mora around a maypole that Zorn himself commissioned. Anders Zorn, home and abroad; it's quite a show.
Practicalities
Anders Zorn: Travelling the World, Remembering the Land is on at the Mapfre Foundation in Madrid until May 17. It's open Tuesdays to Saturdays from 1100 to 2000, Sundays and public holidays from 1100 to 1900 and Mondays from 1400 to 2000. It's perhaps best to go mid-afternoon when it's likely to be quieter: We turned up in the late morning and there was a lengthy queue in front of the single ticket booth; when we came out after about 90 minutes there was no queue whatsoever. Full-price tickets are a bargain at only 5 euros; it's probably worth booking online with a timeslot (see above for link) if you can. Be warned that the wall captions -- black on brown or white on grey in a fairly small font -- are not particularly easy to read.The venue is situated on Paseo Recoletos, part of the north-south boulevard that's home to all Madrid's great art galleries. Recoletos station on the Cercanías suburban rail network and Colón and Banco de España stations on the Metro are just a few minutes walk away.
Images
Anders Zorn, Self-Portrait in Red, 1915, Zornmuseet, Mora. © Zornmuseet, Mora
Anders Zorn, In Mourning, 1880, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm. Photo: Cecilia Heisser/Nationalmuseum
Anders Zorn, Turkish Oarsman, 1886, Zornmuseet, Mora. Photo: © Zornmuseet, Mora
Anders Zorn, Summer Holiday, 1886, Private collection. Photo: Hans Thorwid
Anders Zorn, Summer Holiday, 1886, Private collection. Photo: Hans Thorwid
Anders Zorn, Bathers, 1889, Private collection
Anders Zorn, Elizabeth Sherman Cameron, 1900, Private collection
Anders Zorn, Elizabeth Sherman Cameron, 1900, Private collection
Comments
Post a Comment