En Route to Burano

En Route to Burano, painted in 1894 and held in the Gothenburg Museum of Art, records Zorn's visit to the Venetian lagoon island of Burano, famous for its brightly coloured fishermen's houses and lace-making tradition. Venice and its surrounding waterways were a mandatory destination for Nordic painters during the summer months, offering the challenge of painting brilliant southern light reflected and refracted across moving water. Zorn had previously painted in Venice in the late 1880s and developed a bold, rapid technique for capturing the ephemeral play of light on the lagoon's surface. The 1894 trip continued this engagement, and the view from the boat — with its sense of motion, glare, and watery horizon — became a vehicle for one of his most fluid and economical demonstrations of plein-air technique. The Gothenburg Museum's possession of the work reflects Zorn's strong connections to the Swedish art world even as he maintained an international profile from Paris and, increasingly, Mora.

Oil on canvas with a high-key palette of blue-whites and warm yellows appropriate to the Venetian summer light. Zorn uses rapid, broken strokes to build the lagoon surface, with diagonal marks suggesting reflected light while more controlled passages describe the boat's hull and the distant island architecture.