Dr. William Taussig

Zorn's portrait of Dr. William Taussig, painted in 1897 and now in the Speed Art Museum, Louisville, was produced during the Swedish artist's enormously productive American period. From his first visit to the United States in 1893, Zorn became the portrait painter of choice for the American East Coast and Midwest establishment — industrialists, politicians, and civic leaders who wanted Swedish directness combined with Parisian flair. Dr. Taussig was a prominent St. Louis physician and civic figure, and commissioning Zorn was an assertion of cultural standing as much as a desire for a likeness. Zorn typically completed portraits with great speed, sometimes in two or three sittings, giving his American canvases an immediacy that clients found compelling. The bravura handling visible in the finished work reflects this rapid execution. Zorn's American portraits collectively form one of the most revealing documents of Gilded Age professional society, placing him alongside John Singer Sargent as a chronicler of transatlantic elite culture in the final decade of the nineteenth century.

Oil on canvas, the portrait demonstrates Zorn's economy of means: broad, loaded strokes in the face that read as naturalistic modelling from viewing distance yet dissolve into abstract paint marks on close inspection. The dark background recedes flatly behind a well-lit face and collar, the high tonal contrast directing attention immediately to the sitter's expression. A restrained palette of ochres, raw sienna, and grey-white suggests character without sentimentality.