Prints and Authors in the Time of Manet

Omnibus

Albumen Etching, 1890
Grace J. Hitchcock Collection, 1981.217

Swedish artist Anders Zorn lived in Paris from 1888 until 1896. He admired the Impressionists and was deeply influenced by their modern urban subjects, plunging space, accidental patterns of illumination, and compositional asymmetries and croppings—influences evident in this print. Zorn often took public transportation—here he incorporates his own portrait in a top hat—to study the weary passengers, but also the surprising and fleeting effects of light through the windows on faces and figures. Zorn etched in a quick, improvisatory manner with vigorous hatched lines animating the surface and shifting directions to model the forms. From the early 1890s, his prints found a persistent and lucrative market.