Anders Zorn

Alphaeus Philemon Cole, London (according to a label on the reverse);
Hugo Reisinger, New York, 1911;
His sale, New York, American Arts Association, 18-20 January 1926, lot 79;
There purchased by M. L. Jellinek;
Anonymous sale, Stockholm, Bukowskis, 14 December 1989, lot 262, (as Solbad Pa Dalarö); 
There purchased by the present collector.

Västervik, Västerviks Konstförening, Konst i Västervikshem, 1944, no. 132.

The following condition report has been provided by Simon Parkes of Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc. 502 East 74th St. New York, NY 212-734-3920, simonparkes@msn.com , an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This oil on canvas board is in good condition. The canvas board is stable and flat. The paint layer is slightly dirty and there are a couple of restorations in the lower left and in the water in the center right. In the figure there are a few spots of retouch in her right bicep, in her upper back and beneath the figure in the splash of white paint. It seems more than likely that while the painting was perhaps in the artist's studio it received a few accidental knocks which may have created these small losses which then required restoration. There are a couple of others in the upper portion of the umbrella however, despite the restoration the condition seems very fresh and if the painting were to be cleaned and retouched more accurately, it would be beneficial.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

Anders Zorn is widely considered the greatest Swedish painter, achieving tremendous critical and commercial success as a portraitist during his lifetime. His depictions of society's elite brought him international fame and allowed him entrée into leading cultural circles of the day, yet it was the subject of the female nude that preoccupied him beginning in the late 1880s through the end of his career. Zorn's first serious foray into this subject was during the summer of 1887 in Dalarna, the historic province where Mora, Zorn's hometown, is located; however his move to Paris less than a year later was instrumental in the development of his distinct artistic sensibilities. In the French capital he befriended many of the leading Impressionists of the day and although Zorn considered himself anti-intellectual, his adoption of the Impressionists' painterly techniques aesthetically aligned him with the group. Zorn's approach was unlike many of his Swedish contemporaries whose depictions of female nudes were allegorical in nature. Instead Zorn was interested in conveying the immediacy of modern life and he found the nude female form set against nature a compelling vehicle for examining the formal relationships betweeen light, space, and mass. His decision to show her as a contemporary woman was striking, and Douglas K. S. Hyland writes: "Some critics believe that [Zorn's] direct treatment of the female with complex modern sexual connotations is his most original contribution to the history of painting" (Zorn, Paintings, Graphics and Sculpture, 1986, p. 19).

Badande med parasoll, Dalarö, painted in 1889, typifies Zorn's approach to the female nude figure. It is most probably a study for the larger painting of the same name which Zorn executed for the collector Pontus Fürstenberg's home in Gothenburg in 1889 (now in the Fürstenberg Gallery at the Gothenburg Art Museum). Here Zorn shows a woman reclining along a wooded shore in Dalarö, Sweden, where Zorn and his wife frequently spent their summer holidays. Zorn's skill as a watercolorist – the medium that preoccupied him early in his career – is readily apparent in his treatment of the oil medium; his staccato brushstrokes move quickly across the surface of the composition, suggesting form rather than mimicking it and capturing the transient nature of light. The nude's pronounced curves imbue her with a classical quality, however, through her somewhat obscured figure and the subtle inclusion of the easel in the background, it is clear that she is an artist's model, not a representation of a goddess or a personification of a virtue. The unusual cropping and perspective were perhaps influenced by an exhibition the artist attended in December 1882 in Paris, where he was exposed to the radical perspectives employed by artists such as Manet and Degas and the asymmetric compositions prevalent in Japanese art. Zorn most likely created the present work en plein air, which imparts a distinct freshness to the scene and allowed him to fully explore the aesthetic possibilities of light and space that so greatly inspired him.