Ernst Morris Bratt

Ernst Morris Bratt, dated 1885 and worked on paper, is an early portrait from the period when Zorn was rapidly building his clientele among Swedish and British society. Bratt was a Swedish name associated with professional and commercial life, and a watercolour portrait at this date would have represented a moderate commission from a sitter who wanted Zorn's rising talent but perhaps not the higher cost of an oil. By 1885 Zorn had already produced numerous watercolour portraits in London and Stockholm, and his technique was advancing rapidly toward the ease and economy of his mature work. The 1885 date places this alongside the Lisen Lamm portrait and the Ernest Cassel watercolour, all from a highly productive year in which Zorn's watercolour portraiture was attracting attention from sitters of increasingly diverse social backgrounds.

Watercolour on paper with the developing confidence of a twenty-five-year-old approaching technical mastery. The male sitter's dark formal clothing provides tonal grounding for the more carefully rendered face, and Zorn's growing ease with the medium allows the portrait to achieve its likeness with relatively few over-worked passages.