Elin 1913

Anders Zorn made this etching, Elin, and it’s all about these delicate lines that seem to just barely hold the image together. It feels spontaneous, like he’s capturing a fleeting moment, you know, a glimpse of someone caught off guard. The texture is amazing, especially if you look closely at the pillow. It’s just a mass of tiny scratches, but somehow it gives you this sense of softness, of sinking in. And the way he uses these really thin lines to define the light and shadow, it's almost like he’s sculpting with light. Look at the way the lines darken under her arm, suggesting shadow, and how that contrasts with the blank space that forms the highlights on her back. There's a real conversation happening here between Zorn and artists like Rembrandt, who also used etching to create these incredibly intimate and human images. But Zorn brings his own sensibility, his own way of seeing the world, to the conversation. It's art as an ongoing experiment, isn’t it?