Ferdinand Gaillard
GIRL BATHING
Anders Zorn
EXPULSION FROM PARADISE
From “Eva und die Zukunft.” Max Klinger
Now, if we compare a print of the early times with the technical creations of our present day, we cannot but realize the increased demands made upon the artist. The phenomena of light must be ever studied anew, in the endeavor to attain new, effective, convincing ways of expression—not merely of color and form as heretofore, but of atmosphere, of light, of vibrating, living, I had almost said “moving,” nature. Hence impressionism; hence, also, daring experiments like this girl bathing, by Anders Zorn, the Swedish painter-etcher. Here is a distinct outdoor feeling; the breeze and sun, the modeling of rock, and the softly rounded nude body against its hard face. Everything is done with long, slashing strokes, with hardly any definite outline; a wonderful display of skill. Another illustration, the “Expulsion from Paradise,” by that German master of many arts, Max Klinger, shows us an effect of most intense expression of light in the glaring foreground, where a merciless sun beats down on the first couple: a world all the more arid by contrast with the cool, shady woodland behind the huge, guarded gateway.
The nearer we approach to the present day, the more difficult, even painful, becomes the work of selection; painful because of the many gems barred from inclusion by the necessary restriction of space. A longer review, including men like Lalanne, Legros, Lepère, Schmutzer, Gevger, Munch, Liebermann, Bone, Cameron, Bauer, would needs have to include many others, and disproportionately swell this closing chapter.
If the few prints mentioned—a very few picked from a field immensely rich—should awaken in the reader a desire for further exploration in this world of prints, the purpose of these pages will have been achieved.