On Hemsö Island 1917

Anders Zorn made this etching, On Hemsö Island, with a metal plate and some kind of acid. Can you imagine him bent over the plate, scratching away, dipping it in the acid, checking it, scratching some more? There's a beautiful tension between the specificity of the scene and the mystery of the figures. Zorn captures the women with such a delicate, almost reverent touch, like he’s trying to grasp something just beyond reach. Look at the lines describing the water, those tiny marks evoke so much movement and light. It makes me think about other artists who are obsessed with water, like Winslow Homer, or even Gerhard Richter’s seascapes. What is it about water that draws us in, makes us want to capture it, even though it’s always changing? Maybe Zorn was asking himself the same thing.