Anders Zorn (Mora, 1860 - 1920, Mora)
Morning Toilet (or With His Mother), 1888
Oil on canvas , 60 x 36 cm (23 5/8 x 14 3/16 in.)
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This vertically oriented oil painting depicts a nude mother and toddler entering a shallow semicircle of rocky seashore to bathe on a bright summer morning. The woman faces the viewer but leans toward a small child on the right. Her left hand steadies the child’s left shoulder as her right arm sweeps in a gentle curve over her pelvis to take his outstretched right arm. Both figures have light, warm-toned skin. Both of them look down where their lower legs are submerged and make concentric white ripples in the water. The boy’s bent right knee and thick white paint around his legs indicate he is vigorously splashing the water. The mother and child are positioned as small, minor elements in the mid-to-upper right section of the composition, while the large sweeping curve of the inlet and the water predominate. Large flat boulders outline the upper shoreline. As the semicircle of the inlet progresses from the upper left of the painting, down to the middle right edge and over to the lower left edge, the pink and gray rocks get smaller. In the lower foreground, wispy pale green weeds emerge from the rocky shallows while green and brown trees cast large gray shadows in the background behind the upper boulders. The shallow water nearest the shore reflects a canopy of leaves from trees that are implied but not painted. The blue and gray water farther from shore is clear and shallow. It shows pale rocks and beige currents formed in the sandy bottom. The artist’s signature is present in the bottom right corner.
Veronese Room
Commentary
This painting is one of a group of bathing scenes that Swedish artist Anders Zorn painted in 1888. Zorn captures a single moment during a bright summer morning at the seashore. Executed outdoors on a small island near Stockholm, Zorn gives the impression that he has caught a spontaneous moment, although he almost certainly completed studies of the figures before creating this oil painting.
The painting likely entered Isabella Stewart Gardner's collection as a gift in early 1896, and in May of that year, Zorn wrote enthusiastically to her: “You ask me what I think of the Morning Toilet. Beautiful! Beautiful! Best thing I ever did!” The Zorn's sensually frank nudes were less popular in the United States than his society portraits. Morning Toilet is, therefore, a rarity in American collections, and at one point, this painting was even censored. Sometime after this painting arrived in Boston, the woman's pubic area was retouched to make the scene more modest—although the retouching has since been removed.