Anders Zorn

Perspectives from The Artist's Road

Reveil, boulevard Clichy 1892 (PD US) Watercolor

Zorn was both a friend and friendly competitor of John Singer Sargent, and they both vied for portrait commissions in the same high-society circles of the day. Reading about their parallel working lives, one is struck by the notion that they seem to have been motivated to out-do each other’s creative efforts.

Zorn recalled a conversation he had in 1897 with the railroad tycoon Edward Rathbone Bacon: “He said he wanted me to paint his sister-in-law (Virginia Purdy Bacon) better than Sargent had painted her for George Vanderbilt.” Mr. Bacon didn’t know that Zorn had already painted her once, in Paris. “And Mrs. Bacon told me about my first portrait that when Sargent was going to paint her, he asked to see my work, but had been refused and only been allowed to see it when he had finished his, whereupon he ran a poker through his canvas. So she had to sit for another one.”

They both admired and emulated the tech…