Asplund 280, state iii/III. Signed in pencil lower right: "Zorn". Signed in plate lower left: "Zorn". A fine impression in fine condition aside from slight mat toning, with full margins.
Anders Zorn, the celebrated painter and print-maker, rose from humble beginnings to become a celebrated member of the European and American upper classes. By the 1910s the famous Swedish artist, Anders Zorn, had retreated to his house in Mora, Sweden in the province of Dalecarlia—the site where he was born in 1860, the illegitimate son of a brewery bottle-washer. In his later years many of his subjects were the peasants of Dalecarlia, including young Swedish girls. Gulli was the subject of a previous etching in 1914. His final version—“Gulli II”—was made in 1918, two years before his death.
Not only did Zorn love America, but also America loved him, and continues to do so. The artist was one of the most actively collected printmakers of the early 20th Century, fetching extremely high prices at auction and was often ranked among the world’s most highly-esteemed printmakers. In 1920, a Zorn print from a well-known New York collection brought $3,900, compared to a premium Rembrandt at the same sale that sold for $3,100. In 1928, the Boston Herald published an article highlighting the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston’s acquisition of a collection of 110 Zorn etchings. However, by the 1950s the artist’s prints were largely neglected. With the help of Childs Gallery, the demand for Zorn’s prints has increased steadily since that time. In the early 1970s, the Gallery acquired the Therese Lownes Noble collection of prints and the Frederick Shaeffer collection of prints, each of which had substantial holdings in Zorn. This allowed the gallery to maintain and to continue to acquire a substantial inventory of the artist’s work and in 1974 Childs devoted its first print letter to the artist. The Gallery’s commitment to Zorn was demonstrated by the 1980 exhibition, “Anders Zorn 1860-1921: An Exhibition of 75 Prints” and another show in 1984. The President of Childs Gallery, D. Roger Howlett, encouraged Elizabeth Broun in her groundbreaking 1979 Zorn exhibition at the Spencer Museum at the University of Kansas. That exhibition and the extensive catalogue that accompanied it, rekindled interest in Zorn and was followed in 1993 by “Swedish Impressionism’s Boston Champion: Anders Zorn and Isabella Stewart Gardner” at the Gardner Museum and a Fogg Museum at Harvard University’s exhibition.
