Zorn used lively strokes of pink to create a sense of movement and vivacity in this portrait of Frieda Schiff, the daughter of a New York banker. The Schiffs were among the numerous Jewish Gilded Age patrons connected to Zorn through his wife, Emma Lamm, who was born into a Jewish family in Sweden. Zorn painted eighteen-year-old Frieda during her visit to Paris in the spring of 1894, just weeks after she met her future husband, the budding financier Felix Warburg. As a young child, she had already been depicted alongside her brother Mortimer in a marble relief by the sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, a version of which is in The Met collection (05.15.3).
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Title:Frieda Schiff (1876–1958), Later Mrs. Felix M. Warburg
Artist:Anders Zorn (Swedish, Mora 1860–1920 Mora)
Date:1894
Medium:Oil on canvas
Dimensions:39 3/4 x 30 in. (101 x 76.2 cm)
Classification:Paintings
Credit Line:Bequest of Carola Warburg Rothschild, 1987
Object Number:1988.72
Inscription: Signed and dated (lower left): Zorn / 94
the sitter's father, Jacob H. Schiff, New York (from 1894; commissioned from the artist); the sitter, Frieda Schiff, later Mrs. Felix M. Warburg, New York (until d. 1958); her daughter, Carola Warburg Rothschild, Katonah, New York (until d. 1987)
New York. National Academy of Design. "Portraits of Women," November 1–24, 1894, no. 358 (as "Miss S.," lent by Jacob H. Schiff, Esq.).
Hamburg. Bucerius Kunst Forum. "High Society: American Portraits of the Gilded Age," June 7–August 31, 2008, no. 29.
Boston. Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. "Anders Zorn: A European Artist Seduces America," February 28–May 13, 2013, no. 2.
Anders Zorn. Letter to Isabella Stewart Gardner. May 23, 1894 [see Eze 2013], writes that he is "finishing a pink lady in oil—no good—Have no expectations on Champ[sic] de Mars" [this work].
"Portraits of Women." Outlook (November 17, 1894), p. 820.
Karl Asplund. Anders Zorn: His Life and Work. Ed. Geoffrey Holme. London, 1921, p. 42, states that the portrait was executed during the artist's first trip to America in 1894.
Edward M. M. Warburg. As I Recall: Some Memoirs. Passaic, N. J., 1978, p. 43, states that his mother was eighteen at the time of the portrait; quotes his grandfather as having found the painting beautiful but questioning its likeness to his daughter and the artist's response.
Katharine Baetjer. European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art by Artists Born Before 1865: A Summary Catalogue. New York, 1995, p. 240, ill.
Anders Zorn. Självbiografiska anteckningar. Ed. Birgitta Sandström. Mora, Sweden, 2004, p. 147.
Barbara Dayer Gallati in Barbara Dayer Gallati. High Society. American Portraits of the Gilded Age. Exh. cat., Bucerius Kunst Forum. Hamburg, 2008, pp. 140, 142–43, no. 29, ill. (color).
Eric Homberger in Barbara Dayer Gallati. High Society. American Portraits of the Gilded Age. Exh. cat., Bucerius Kunst Forum. Hamburg, 2008, p. 30.
Susanne Scharf in Barbara Dayer Gallati. High Society. American Portraits of the Gilded Age. Exh. cat., Bucerius Kunst Forum. Hamburg, 2008, p. 193.
William Hagans and Willow Hagans. Zorn in America: A Swedish Impressionist of the Gilded Age. Chicago, 2009, pp. 60, 79, 119, 352 n. 61, dates it to winter 1894, shortly before the sitter's marriage to Felix Warburg.
Oliver Tostmann inAnders Zorn: A European Artist Seduces America. Ed. Oliver Tostmann. Exh. cat., Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Boston, 2013, p. 17.
Anne-Marie Eze inAnders Zorn: A European Artist Seduces America. Ed. Oliver Tostmann. Exh. cat., Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Boston, 2013, pp. 84, 174, no. 2, ill. pp. 79, 85 (color, overall and detail), publishes Zorn 1894 and identifies The Met's painting as the one discussed in the letter; confirms that the picture was painted in Paris in spring 1894 based on Zorn 1894.
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