Madonna

Anders Zorn (1860-1920) was internationally one of the most famous artists of his era. Particularly popular in the USA, which he visited seven times and where he painted the portraits of three presidents, Zorn is often compared with his equally brilliant near contemporary, rival and friend, John Singer Sargent. Of humble origins - he was the illegitimate son of a German brewer and Swedish peasant - he grew up with his grandparents in rural Sweden. His incredible artistic talent was already widely known when he was in his late teens at art art school. Zorn went on to make a shrewd marriage to Emma Lamm, who came from a wealthy Jewish merchant family and was interested in art and travel. 

Zorn's work can best be characterised as 'modernistic' and 'impressionistic' without going the whole hog. But what led to tremendous popularity in the 'gilded age' brought in turn a savage modernist backlash, and just like Sargent, Zorn was absurdly underrated in the mid 20th century. Although he has still some way to go to recover his international fame and reputation, he is revered and valued - both intellectually and commercially - in his native Sweden. 

While he was best known for his paintings, his etchings were tremendously popular as both 'entry level' Zorns, and lovely objects in their own right. They fetched higher prices than Rembrandts in his lifetime - which coincided with the height of the Etching Revival - and never fell entirely out of favour. He made nearly 300 in his lifetime. Many related to paintings, both watercolour and oil. Turning to oil painting in the early 1890s helped liberate Zorn's hitherto fairly tight and fastidious etching style. As Douglas Hyland writes, 'Zorn was concerned with the effect of light not only to achieve a sense of mood but of motion...'. One of his near contemporaries, curator H.P. Rossitter of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, believed 'Zorn has succeeded better than any of his predecessors in suggesting by layers of lines that evanescence of light and air which, under changing condition of sun and shadow, wrap the body like an invisible cloak'.

Zorn's female nudes constitute a robust and important area of his oeuvre, both in paintings and print. His fondness of painting full-figured women gave rise to the terms Zorn's kulla or dalakulla, an unmarried woman or girl from Dalecarlia, as the women were called in the local dialect of the region in Sweden where Zorn lived.

This is one of Zorn’s most psychologically complex prints. A young Swedish woman holds her baby up close in a heartwarming scene. A glow seems to come from the baby. Only the mother can see their face. And then, when you see that Zorn has named the print <em>Madonna</em>, (it was also known as and is sometimes known as <em>Swedish Madonna</em> and <em>Madonna [A Mother]</em>, it suddenly takes on a whole new meaning.

Zorn is comparing the peasant mother and child with one of the archetypal Christian images, depictions of the Virgin Mary and the Christ Child. Consequently, Zorn has raised the importance of this everyday activity to one of religious reverence. From the mother’s headscarf, to the swaddling of the baby, to the glow that makes them emerge from the dark background, the entire composition echoes Renaissance Madonnas in order to create a powerfully religious statement.

It is even more powerful when you realise that it was unusual for Zorn to use religious imagery or meaning in his artwork. He first explored this composition in a painting that is now in the Fine Arts Museum in Budapest. Zorn tended to be anti-clerical, or against the influence of clergy on secular life, and made the painting in order to express his beliefs after arguing about religion with the Swedish art critic Tor Hedberg (1862–1931). In the painting Zorn included a man behind the mother, suggesting a holy family, but this man is now lost in the dark background of the print.

On another occasion, however, Zorn wrote that the scene is supposed to be a remorseful mother confronted by her former fiancé. This narrative would have resonated with Zorn personally, because he himself was born to an unwed mother and perhaps felt it necessary to obliterate the father in the print. These many layers—public and private, religious and secular—create a complex image that may have reflected Zorn’s own attempt to find a place in the world.

See:

Douglas Hyland and Hans Henri Brummer, <em>Zorn: Paintings, Graphics and Sculpture </em>(Birmingham, AL, 1986)

Catherine Sawinski, 'From the collection: Anders Zorn returns to Sweden', Milwaukee Art Museum Blog, https://blog.mam.org/2016/07/12/from-the-collection-anders-zorn-returns-to-sweden/

Wikipedia, 'Anders Zorn', https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Zorn

Dr Mark Stocker  Curator, Historical International Art   July 2018