Thursday, December 9, 2010

Zorn's Results

Anders Zorn was a Swede.  He lived from 1860 to 1920.  He was famous for his portraits (not his favourite) and nude figures in nature.  However, he could paint anything as shown below.



 Vogskvalp


When he used this short palette he managed to get high chroma reds and low chroma blues and greys cooled by yellow and white in a way that most artists cannot achieve with a huge array of colours at their disposal.  He worked from life (thus in the genre of an impressionist).  Apparently he earned huge sums of money from his many commissions.  When he passed they found millions stashed away in his studio - along with a cache of paint tubes that included every colour under the sun including blue.  So he was an experimenter exploring possibilities all his life.

kvinna som klar sig

Just look at the variety he achieved, the brushwork, the rendering, the composition, the edges.  He could do so much with so little.  So simple - but no short cuts.

Les Demoiselles Schwartz

For the complete work refer to anderszorn.org.

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