International studio (40.1910)

Some Notable Swedish Etchers

SOME NOTABLE SWEDISH Zorn's career as an etcher, but a few cursory notes
ETCHERS. BY GEORG wnl have t0 suffice. He was, during his first
BROCHNER sojourn in London, initiated into the art of the

needle by his countryman, Axel Herman Hcigg,
The fiftieth birthday of Anders Zorn, the world- for many years a resident in London, where he is
famed Swedish painter and unquestionably one of better known under the Anglicized name of Haig.
the most brilliant and powerful etchers of the day, Haig's portrait formed the first subject of his pupil's
affords a fitting opportunity for a brief survey of efforts—it was in the year 1882—and four more
some of his more recent work and that of a few etchings hail from the same year, mostly repre-
of his compatriots within this branch of the graphic senting Spanish women. Another, On the Thames,
arts. The occasion is all the more acceptable was added the following year, the young Swedish
inasmuch as these arts seem fully to share in the artist having for the time being made London his
present remarkable revival, not to say renaissance, headquarters. In 1884 eight etchings emanated
in Swedish art generally which is now succeeding from Zorn's studio, including a second portrait of
the fallow time into which the so-called Diisseldorf Haig. Both this and the first are expressive
period ultimately ebbed out. Paris then became likenesses, only the line, which, as behoves the
the 7-endez-vons of a num-
ber of singularly gifted
young Swedish artists,
and once away from the
wonted surroundings and
influences and a, then
perhaps, somewhat stale
academic tradition, the
artistic individualities of
this highly talented cluster
were afforded scope and
freedom for spontaneous
and independent develop-
ment.

Zorn, however, when
in 1881 he began his
lengthy peregrinations,
betook himself to Spain,
and, like other eminent
Scandinavian artists—
amongst them Kroyer
and Thaulow — he was
profoundly impressed by
Velasquez; but Zorn
seems to have felt his own
naiurel, artistic and other-
wise, in closer accord
with that of the great
Spaniard, and to have
been more enduringly in-
fluenced by him than
were the two other North-
erners I have just men-
tioned.

It would have been
tempting to deal more

exhaustively, in a retro- portrait of c. f. liljewaixh, esq. by anders zorn

pective manner, with {From a trial proof in the Collection of Thorsten Laurin, Esq., Stockholm)

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