Anders Zorn

Acquired by the husband of the present owner in the mid-1970s

The canvas has been relined. Apart from scattered flecks of retouching, visible only under ultraviolet light, and scattered small spots of craquelure, this work is in very good condition and ready to hang.
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In 1905, Anders Zorn returned to his childhood home of Mora, an area characterised by its ancient, rural way of life. The time that he had spent in Paris and America had separated him from the lifestyle and culture that he so intimately understood and the vivid folk life he yearned to depict.

The folk rituals and customs of Mora offered him the perfect escape to an idealised world of innocence, and local girls dressed in traditional costume became one of his favourite motifs. In the present work, the glowing young girl entering the darkness of Zorn's Gopsmor stuga (the log cabin he had built on the bank of the river Dalalven), being lit from behind, is represented as the focal point of the composition. The deft brushstrokes sensitively illuminate the interior and envelop the scene with a comforting sense of security and intimacy so estranged from the outside world.

'Zorn was fascinated by native peasant costume, and he respected local variations to the extent of  refusing to paint a model in garb from outside her native district... With increasing industrialisation and the displacement of the population to the cities, there was concern for the preservation of the vanishing peasant culture' (Kirk Varnedoe, 'Nationalism, Internationalism, and the Progress of Scandinavian Art', Northern Light, New York, 1982, p. 234).

Zorn had already in 1896, as a pioneer in this field, begun to revive and encourage the old customs and handicraft traditions of his home province. When he gave the village of Morkarleby a May tree in 1896, he succeeded in reviving a tradition which probably dates back to pagan times. At midnight, the peasants would erect a tall pole decorated with flowers and greenery, and then dance until dawn.

World War I had a profound influence on Zorn, and caused him to isolate himself. 'He felt the war as a permanent weight and under these circumstances his Gopsmor studio became even more of a retreat. From a world of pain, where everything he dreamed of and hoped for was threatened, he fled to his work in this romantic milieu where he became absorbed in a primitive existence' (Gerda Boethius, Anders Zorn: An International Swedish Artist, his life and work, Stockholm, 1954, p. 72).