Size of the original etching, 9 × 6¼ inches
Zorn. Ernest Renan
Size of the original etching, 9⅜ × 13½ inches
Here is set down for all time in a few unerring lines the soul and body of the man—the casuist and the voluptuary of thought, the Balzacian bulk of him physically and the bigness of him mentally. The massive and apparently grotesque exterior of this speculative dreamer, immersed in his own meditations, conveys something of the same sense of aloofness with which Rodin has invested his statue of Balzac. They both appear to be dreaming of life and its mysteries until the immense torso seems but an Olympian pedestal supporting the domelike head. It is more than a pocket-edition biography, this portrait. Executed in one sitting in Renan’s study in April of 1892, nine years after his initiation into the mysteries of etching, this plate may be said to epitomize the whole art of Zorn,—his vigorous truthfulness, his synthetic treatment of salient points of character, and his love of dramatic contrasts of sharply juxtaposed masses of black and white. Moreover, it furnishes a striking exposition of the purely technical side of his art in which he has created for himself a highly original and personal method. No one has eschewed more rigorously than he the “happy accidents” employed as a convenient cloak by masquerading incompetents, foisting their meaningless scrawls on a bewildered public, to whom etching has become synonymous with a pretty dilettantism that is within the easy reach of every aspiring fledgling of art. These parallel, slanting strokes that seem to cut and divide the form into unrelated sections are really the expression of an accurate and well-defined intention that manifests itself in the extraordinary verisimilitude of the figure and its adroitly suggested accessories. It is like a fleeting glimpse in a mirror in which the impalpable spirit of reality is reflected, evoking by some mysterious incantation the most fugitive nuances of expression and gesture with the slightest inflection of his modeling.
It is the extreme refinement and subtility in this seeming brutality that give to these plates their unique value and interest. Seldom has a man suggested his predecessors less than does Zorn in these epigrammatic etchings. They are according to no established formula. If he has looked upon Rembrandt, as what practitioner of aqua fortis has not, there is but slight evidence of it in these straightforward vibrant plates. To be sure, he has the same love of bold contrasts of light and shade as had the master of Amsterdam, without the romantic glamour of the dreamy Dutchman. This modern Swede is more direct, more incisive, his line has something of the penetrating and biting analysis of a page from Strindberg, and not infrequently, as in the case of his haunting portrait of the besotted poet Paul Verlaine, there is discernible a sort of ironic humor that throws a revealing light upon his sitter. With what discerning and subtle insight he has portrayed that gentle flavor of intellectual skepticism which is the chief characteristic of Anatole France; while the head of Rodin, laughing in his foaming beard, is highly indicative of the immense creative energy of the author of Le Penseur. In every instance he has successfully summarized the essential and abiding characteristics of his sitter, no less effectually accomplished in the twenty-minute impromptu of Marcelin Berthelot than in the more deliberately studied portrait of Marquand, or the very succinctly realized version of August Strindberg, the Swedish author. These portraits of contemporary men and women are fascinating records of repeated excursions into the realm of character, which holds for Zorn the strongest appeal, as it has ever for all men of the North, whose supreme happiness is the realization of a clearly defined individualism.
Zorn. August Strindberg
Size of the original etching, 11⅜ × 7⅝ inches
