Bather with Parasol, Dalarö

Bather with Parasol, Dalarö, painted in 1889 and held at the Fürstenberg Gallery, depicts a summer bathing scene at Dalarö, a coastal community in the Stockholm Archipelago that was a fashionable summer resort for the Swedish capital's prosperous classes. The parasol identifies the bather as a woman of some social standing — parasols were used to protect fashionable pale complexions from the sun — and the combination of near-nudity for bathing with the social accessory of the parasol creates a charged juxtaposition between exposure and modesty. Dalarö was also a working coastal community, and Zorn's choice of this archipelago location rather than the Mediterranean settings popular with his contemporaries reflects his consistent preference for Nordic subjects even as he maintained an international career. The Fürstenberg Gallery's collection of Zorn's work placed it among the most important repositories of Swedish modern painting.

Oil paint on canvas with the loose, plein-air handling Zorn brought to his coastal bathing subjects. The combination of water, summer light, and a figure with a parasol creates the complex light conditions — reflected glare, cast shadow, ambient sky-light — that he managed with increasing confidence throughout the late 1880s.