Summer Eve

1894

Oil on canvas

During the summer of 1894, Zorn stayed on the island, Dalarö in Stockholm’s archipelago, where he sailed his boat Mejt. In the painting of the girl going down into the water for an evening swim, Zorn joins a genre with a long tradition in European art, “nudes in open-air”. However, Zorn brought a new, healthy sensibility to the genre by painting real flesh-and-blood women, not ancient goddesses. The woman’s bare skin joins the landscape in a mother-of-pearl shimmering color chord. For a period, Summer Eve was owned by the National Gallery in Berlin.