In my post on the paintings of the terrific Swedish artist Anders Zorn back in March of this year, I promised to follow up with a post on his amazing etchings.
I just love etchings, they have a line quality and visual charm unlike any other medium. There are three artists at the very top of my list of favorite etchers: Rembrandt, Whistler and Anders Zorn.
Zorn’s subjects were generally portraits, nudes and interior scenes, which he rendered with a smoky flurry of soft lines — often in drypoint — that carry an extraordinary feeling of light and atmosphere. His portraits included noted figures like Grover Cleveland, artists like Augustus Saint Gaudens (above, 5th down) and a number of self portraits (above top and second from the bottom).
Despite unpredictable variations in apparent paper color, there is a fairly good selection of Zorn’s etchings on Wikimedia Commons, from which the above images were drawn. Many are available in high resolution (look for those with file sizes over 1mb), in which you can see his remarkable use of line.
See my previous post on Anders Zorn.
