Porträt der Töchter von Ramón Subercaseaux

By 1892 Anders Zorn had left Sweden for Paris and was moving in the same circle as John Singer Sargent, who probably steered this commission his way. The client was Ramon Subercaseaux, a Chilean diplomat and painter, and the subjects were his two young daughters, Blanca and Rosaria. Where a society portraitist of the day would have posed children to face the viewer, Zorn caught the girls absorbed in their own game, unaware of being watched. He tilted the floor upward and dropped his own eye to their level, so that we seem to be crouching in the room beside them. Zorn built his reputation on exactly this kind of quick, wet, confident brushwork, and he would carry it home to Sweden and into the bathing nudes he is best remembered for.