Anders Zorn’s Impressionist Portraiture at the Gardner Museum

Mar 1, 2013 | painting

This week, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum opened a new exhibition dedicated to the works of Anders Zorn, a Scandinavian artist whose skillful impressionist portraiture won him celebrity status during the Belle Epoque in Paris.

 The gallery was just phenomenal, but I’m a sucker for impressionism, especially when its framed by shiny gold and hung on deep blue walls.

Each wall of this high-ceilinged cube was given allotted works from a different section of Zorn’s life, and even though the women looked like goddesses in the high society portraits, my favorite wall was the “In the Studio.”

Left: In Wikstrom’s Studio, 1889
Right: Self-Portrait, 1889

In Zorn’s “Self-Portrait,” his face looks out past the frame, placed kitty-corner to a bust’s face staring past him the same way. His whiskers are long and balance out a wide forehead that crouches over small eyes with a very serious look in them.

In Wikstrom’s Studio, 1889

Hanging next to this work sits another painting incorporating sculpture – here creating soft blurry contrast with the model undressing. “In Wikstrom’s Studio,” her smooth figure stands behind a large gray leg and before a headless white nude sculpture facing the light and leaning back, his shoulders still suppoted by a brace. The warm light shines across all three figures: sculpture, model, sculpture with red hair glowing.

For more pictures of the new exhibit, check out the Gardner’s website and my Flickr set!

Night Effect, 1895

Right: Martha Dana, 1899
Left: Joseph Randall Coolidge, 1899

“Omnibus,” Paris 1892