Carl Jonsson

Carl Jonsson, painted in 1917, is another of the late Swedish male portraits that Zorn produced in his final productive years at Mora. The name Carl Jonsson was among the most common Swedish names of the period, suggesting a subject from the working or middle class rather than the titled nobility or political elite — the kind of subject that constituted the backbone of his domestic Swedish clientele. By 1917 Zorn's late portrait style was fully formed, characterised by selective focus, warm tonality, and the absolute economy of means that his decades of practice had made possible. A portrait of Carl Jonsson would have been valued within his community as a record of an individual life, and the collection of such portraits at the Zorn Collections provides an invaluable social document of the world Zorn inhabited in his final years.

Oil on canvas with the decisive, minimal handling of Zorn's late male portraits. The tonal structure is established rapidly and confidently, the face receiving the most sustained attention while the surrounding passages are indicated with suggestive rather than descriptive brushwork.