19th Century European Art including Sporting Paintings

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Lot 39
  • 39

Anders Zorn

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Description

  • Anders Zorn
  • The Awakening
  • signed Zorn and dated 1906 (lower right)

  • oil on canvas

  • 21 1/2 by 29 1/2 in.
  • 54.5 by 75 cm

Provenance

A. Jacobsen, Stockholm

Exhibited

Stockholm, The Art Association, Aug.-Sept. 1912

Literature

Ernst Malmberg, Larsson, Liljefors and Zorn, a Review, Stockholm, 1919, illustrated opposite Chapter 17
Gerda Boethius, Anders Zorn, Nordisk Rotogravyr, Stockholm, 1949, p. 551 

Catalogue Note

Anders Leonard Zorn retained an appreciation for the female nude throughout his career.  During the 1880s and 1890s, the artist painted most of his nudes in the Swedish archipelago, in a highly impressionistic manner that evoked a spirit of open-air vitalism.

The dramatic contrasts of light and shadow in the present work serve to give further naturalistic solidity and surface texture to the subject.  As Karl Asplund described: ""the play of warm and cold light on female forms [is] the favorite theme of the painter"(Karl Asplund, Anders Zorn: His Life and Work, London, 1921, p. 57).