Porträt der Lisen Lamm

Porträt der Lisen Lamm, a watercolour of 1885, records one of the Swedish bourgeois subjects that Zorn painted as his reputation grew among Stockholm's professional and commercial class in the early part of his career. The name Lisen is a Swedish diminutive typically used for informal, familiar subjects rather than formal sitters, suggesting this may be a portrait of a friend or social acquaintance rather than a commissioned work. By 1885 Zorn was twenty-five and had already demonstrated sufficient ability to attract portrait commissions from Swedish society, while simultaneously building his watercolour technique toward the facility that would distinguish him among European practitioners of the medium. Portraits made on paper at this stage of his career show him negotiating between the technical demands of watercolour — its speed, its irreversibility, its dependence on tonal planning — and the social demands of portraiture, which required flattery within truth.

Watercolour on paper with Zorn's developing facility: broader washes than his earliest work, greater confidence in leaving passages summary, and a growing ease with the tonal relationships that convey a face convincingly in the transparent medium. The palette is warm and flattering without being falsely idealised.