Anders Zorn

Executed in Zorn’s studio in Paris during the autumn 1891. Halsey Cooley Ives (1847-1911), to whom Zorn presented this etching, was the founder of the Saint Louis School and Museum of Fine Arts. The institution later became two distinct bodies; the Saint Louis Art Museum and the Washington University School of Art which includes the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum. Ives was called to Chicago in 1892 to organize and conduct the art department of the World’s Columbian Exposition, or the Chicago World's Fair as it is often called, that was to take place the following year. The present etching was presented to Ives in conjunction with the fair. A few years later, on a visit to St. Louis, Zorn painted Ives portrait, which today is in the Saint Louis Art Museum (see fig.). In 1893 Zorn also presented an etching to Ives depicting the American financier and philanthropist Henry Marquand etched in New York the same year. This etching, inscribed "First proof to my friend Ives, affectionately Zorn”, was also with the Andersson Galleries, New York in 1931.