The Flea

The Flea, painted in 1918, belongs to the intimate genre tradition of depicting a woman searching for a flea — a subject with roots stretching back to Dutch seventeenth-century painting and continuing through French Rococo and into the nineteenth century. The act of searching one's clothing or skin for a flea combined nudity or near-nudity with a domestic gesture of uninhibited self-absorption, making it a traditional vehicle for depicting the unguarded female body. By 1918 Zorn was seventy-eight years old, his health failing, yet he continued to work productively at Mora. The late bathing and intimate figure scenes of his final years show no loss of technical command, maintaining the directness and sensory immediacy that defined his mature work. The Flea connects his late Dalarnan production to the long European tradition of figure painting that he had absorbed through study in London, Paris, and the great museum collections of the continent.

Oil on canvas with Zorn's confident late-period handling. The intimacy of the subject is matched by a direct, closely observed approach to the figure, with warm skin tones built up through layered but decisive brushwork. The limited setting keeps all attention on the figure and her absorbed gesture.