Anders Zorn

Anders Leonard Zorn was born on February 18, 1860, in Mora, Dalarna, to an unwed peasant mother and a Bavarian brewer. Showing astonishing talent carving wooden figures, he studied at the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm, astonishing the art world with his watercolor mastery.

Zorn became one of the most sought-after portraitists in Paris, London, and New York, painting three United States Presidents (Grover Cleveland, William Howard Taft, and Theodore Roosevelt). Famous for using a restricted palette of only four colors (white, yellow ochre, vermilion, and ivory black), his virtuoso oil paintings captured the shimmering sunlight on Dalecarlian lakes and the joyous vitality of Midsummer dances (Midsommardans). Returning to Mora, he and his wife Emma established the Zorn Collections and donated their fortune to preservation.