Ett föredöme för modern konst

Abstract

Summary When Alfred Lichtwark (1852–1914) was appointed director of the Hamburg Kunsthalle in 1886 he set about reorganising the museum's art collections in order to create a modern museum and pave the way for a cautious approach to impressionism. He invited to Hamburg for this purpose many avant‐guarde artists from Germany and elsewhere such as Max Liebermann, Leopold von Kalckreuth, Pierre Bonnard, Edouard Vuillard and others, to paint local motifs. The Swedish painter Anders Zorn (1860–1920) was one of the first guests, being expected to give a model for modern colourism. His watercolour, The Port of Hamburg was signed in 1891. Strangely enough, it was not integrated into the museum's collection until 1901. The first part of the present paper deals with the question of why Zorn's picture “disappeared” for a ten year period. Comparisons with other paintings that suffered a similar fate throughout the 1890's backed up by a study of archive material give an indication that Zorn's watercolour did not confo...