Spetssöm (Lace-making) - Anders Zorn

A domestic scene by Swedish artist Anders Zorn depicting two women making lace. This oil painting uses a limited palette and loose brushwork to capture quiet concentration.

Anders Zorn was a Swedish painter who achieved international success for his portraits and genre scenes. This work, titled Spetssöm, depicts two women engaged in the traditional craft of lace-making. The composition focuses on the concentration of the subjects as they work with fine threads. Zorn uses a limited selection of colours, often referred to as the Zorn palette. This typically consists of yellow ochre, vermilion, ivory black, and lead white. By restricting his range, he creates a unified tonal atmosphere that emphasises light and form over varied hues. The Zorn palette is a specific technical approach that limits the artist to four pigments. By using only yellow ochre, vermilion, ivory black, and lead white, Zorn achieved a wide range of flesh tones and atmospheric effects. This method requires a sophisticated understanding of colour mixing and value. In Spetssöm, the skin tones of the two women are rendered with subtle transitions between warm and cool shades. The black pigment acts as a blue when mixed with white, allowing for the cool shadows seen in the fabric and hair. The brushwork is loose and gestural, characteristic of Zorn's mature style. He applies paint with broad strokes that suggest detail without defining every edge. The woman in the foreground wears a light-coloured blouse with small dark patterns. Her companion is dressed in a bold red garment that provides a strong contrast against the neutral background. Light enters from the side, illuminating the hands and the delicate lace. This focus on domestic labour was a common theme in late nineteenth-century Scandinavian art. Zorn often returned to his home region of Mora in Sweden to find subjects, interested in preserving local traditions through his art.