Carl Larsson talks about Zorn

Carl Larsson (second from left) and Anders Zorn (right)

Anders Zorn's contemporary Carl Larsson said that when he sat as a model for the great portraitist, Zorn "glared at him as if he would eat him up." 

Anders Zorn, Self Portrait

Biographer Karl Asplund said in 1921: "With Zorn it was not a question of the jargon of the studio, with its talk of 'the emancipation of art.' In the depth of his heart he would rather conquer the subject, retain it, explain it, and communicate to others in his own way the pleasure his eyes had experienced."

Anders Zorn, Self Portrait

According to Aslplund, "He did not care to talk about the theory of art; his theory was simple enough. He once explained to me the joy he felt in revealing the beauty of a subject through his brush, in making the spectator stop and look at Nature in a new way, a Nature more rich and beautiful —more 'Zornesque.'"

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From Karl Asplund's 1921 book, Anders Zorn: His Life And Work

The big Anders Zorn exhibition is currently in San Francisco, and will come to the National Academy Museum in New York on February 27.

There's a new catalog available that I will soon be reviewing.