Historic wall art for homes with soul

Anders Zorn is strongly associated with portraits painted on commission, but Nationalmuseum’s review indicates that this watercolor was likely created on his own initiative. That makes the image unusual within his portrait oeuvre. Here, he did not primarily need to fulfill a patron’s wishes or create an official representation of a named person. Instead, the watercolor could emerge from his own choice of subject and situation. The work moreover entered the Nationalmuseum only in 2015, acquired with funds from the Hedda and N. D. Qvist Fund. A free study thus had to wait a long time for its place in Sweden’s national collection.