Zorn Honeymoon in Konstantinopel

Mavi Boncuk | 

Honeymoon 1886 Konstantinopel, Istanbul, by G. Berggren.[1]

Zorn and His Wife. Zorn returned to Sweden in June 1885 and secured the consent of Emma’s parents for their marriage. Promptly after their wedding in October the couple embarked on a long honeymoon trip to Constantinople (present-day Istanbul) via Germany and Hungary. While traveling they learned he was given membership in the Swedish Royal Order of Vasa, a great honor for the young artist. Zorn suffered from typhoid fever while in Constantinople, but recovered.

Anders Leonard Zorn (18 February 1860 – 22 August 1920) Swedish painter, etcher and sculptor. 

He was brought up by his grandparents. Born out of wedlock in the little town of Mora in the middle of Sweden, Zorn had few prospects, but he had enough artistic talent to gain admission to the Royal Academy of Art in Stockholm in 1875.As he displayed a precocious talent for drawing he was admitted to the preparatory class of the Kungliga Akademi for de Fria Konsterna, Stockholm, at the age of 15. Dissatisfied with the outdated teaching and discipline of the Academy and encouraged by his early success as a painter of watercolour portraits and genre scenes. Zorn left the Academy in 1881 to try to establish an international career. He later resided mainly in London but also travelled extensively in Italy, France, Spain, Algeria and the Balkans and visited Constantinople[1]. 

ZORN MUSEUM Vasagatan 36 Box 32, 792 21 Mora info@zorn.se



[1] The Swede Vilhelm Berggren (1835–1920) represents the first century of photography. He sought his fortune abroad, came to Constantinople in 1866 and quickly established himself as one of the city’s great photographers, changing his name to Guillaume Berggren. He documented Turkey in a time of change, and he is reckoned today as one of the pioneers of Turkish photography. Pictures from the German Archaeological Institute in Istanbul, which rescued much of Berggren’s treasury of photographs in the 1920s, shed new light on a Swede who is little known today. 

See Also: Article | Ottoman Photography by Engin Ozendes

 [2] At the end of May 1882, the young Swedish painter arrived in Richmond, south west London, to spend the summer together with a friend who he knew from his years in Stockholm. The painter was the 22-year-old Anders Zorn, who came from Spain where he had spent the winter in Seville and Cadíz. Here he had enjoyed his first international success with a small exhibition, the first of very many abroad and Mary Smith was Zorn’s favourite model during the years he stayed in England. She can be seen for example, in On the Thames, where she is sitting in a typical Thames rowing boat handling the steer ropes and steadily looking straight in to the eyes of the rowing man (the spectator!). In this painting, Mary is wearing the same white dress as In the Hammock and other works from these years. She later married a butcher and the couple moved to Istanbul where Emma and Anders Zorn, travelling on their honeymoon, met them in the beginning of 1886. 

 On the Thames. Etching on ivory wove paper 265 x 184 mm (image); 298 x 200 mm (plate); 393 x 282 mm (sheet) 

Three Zorn artworks from Istanbul. Two versions of "Rover | kaıkroddare " and "Am ehemaligen Topkapi-Palast Konstantinopel | at the Former palace of Topkapi."