It is a very pretty idea,
especially when one stakes on zero at Monte Carlo; but no doubt Anders
Zorn would be the first to laugh the idea out of doors.

We recall an exhibition a few years ago at Venice in the art gallery
of the Giardino Reale. Zorn had a place of honour among the boiling
and bubbling Secessionists; indeed, his work filled a large room. And
what work! Such a giant's revel of energy. Such landscapes, riotous,
sinister, and lovely. Such women! Here we pause for breath. Zorn's
conception of womanhood has given offence to many idealists, who do
not realise that once upon a time our forebears were furry and
indulged in arboreal habits. Zorn can paint a lady; he has signed many
gentle and aristocratic canvases.

But Zorn is also too sincere not to paint what he sees. Some of his
models are of the earth, earthy; others step toward you with the
candid majesty of a Brunhilda, naked, unashamed, and regal. They are
all vital. We recall, too, the expressions, shocked, amazed, even
dazed, of some American art students who, fresh from their golden
Venetian dreams, faced the uncompromising pictures of a man who had
faced the everyday life of his day. For these belated visionaries,
whose ideal in art is to painfully imitate Giorgione, Titian, or
Tiepolo, this modern, with his rude assault upon the nerves, must seem
a very iconoclast. Yet Zorn only attempts to reproduce the life
encircling him. He is a child of his age. He, too, has a perception of
beauty, but it is the beauty that may be found by the artist with an
ardent, unspoiled gaze, the curious, disquieting beauty of our time.
Whistler saw it in old Venetian doorways as well as down Chelsea way
or at Rotherhithe. Zorn sees it in some corner of a wood, in some
sudden flex of muscle or intimate firelit interior. And he loves to
depict the glistening curves of his big model as she stands in the
sunlight, a solid reproach to physical and moral anaemia. A pagan, by
Apollo!

As an etcher the delicacy of his sheathed lion's paw is the principal
quality that meets the eye, notwithstanding the broad execution.
Etching is essentially an impressionistic art. Zorn is an
impressionist among etchers. He seems to attack his plate not with the
finesse of a meticulous fencing-master but like a Viking, with a broad
Berserker blade. He hews, he hacks, he gashes. There is blood in his
veins, and he does not spare the ink. But examine closely these little
prints--some of them m