One of Sweden's internationally best-known artists is Anders Zorn. He is profoundly famous for his portraiture work, as well as, his graphic work, where he is among the most talented of all times. In Sweden his nude studies are very famous, as are his genre pictures depicting the working class people.

Zorn was born in 1860, the son of Grudd Anna Andersdotter, known as Mona, or "mother" in Mora dialect. She came from a family of farmers and contributed to the family's income by working seasonally in a brewery in Uppsala where she met the German brewer Leonhard Zorn, her son's father. There was never a discussion of marriage and Anders Zorn never met his father who died in 1872. Zorn's father did acknowledge his son and Anders carried his father's name throughout his life.

Anders' grandparents raised Zorn and by the age of 12, the youngster displayed an unusual artistic ability, carving horses and human figures in wood. At the age of 15 he entered the Royal Academy of Art in Stockholm. He planned to become a sculptor but soon watercolor painting prevailed. This was a rather uncommon technique at the time and he pursued it as his main technique until around 1887.

At the Student exhibition in 1880, Zorn showed a watercolor, which propelled him into the art world. Members of Stockholm's society now turned to Zorn with commissions. His portraits of children were much in demand. In 1881, in connection with such a commission that Zorn met his future wife, Emma Lamm Although Emma's family liked Zorn, Emma came from a family of money and without money a marriage could never take place.

For the next four years, Zorn traveled abroad, refining his skills and collecting patrons along the way. In the autumn of 1885, they married. They traveled for the next eleven years to London and Paris, returning to Mora during the summers. During this time, Anders turned to oil painting, exhibiting at the Salon of Paris. The French State purchased his painting. In the spring of 1888, the Zorns settled in Paris.

It was Zorn's primarily skill as a portrait painter that first gained him international acclaim but about the same time that Zorn moved to Paris he began working with the motif that he later became most renowned for, the nude depicted outdoors. The movement of water and the reflection of light on its surface had long fascinated him. Now he further complicated the situation by placing a model beside or in the water.

By 1893, Zorn traveled to the United States to represent the arts in Sweden. He would make seven more trips to the United States honoring his homeland. By 1907 the trips he made were primarily for pleasure, but also included a large number of paintings, mostly portraits. He portrayed American presidents: Grover Cleveland and his wife in 1899, National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC, and William Taft in 1911, the White House. He made an etching of Theodore Roosevelt in 1905. One of the benefits of the presidential portraits was the number of commissions that Zorn received in the USA. The majority of these more than one hundred paintings are still privately owned, but there are also good works by Zorn in several museums, including St Louis and Chicago.

Zorn's astounding skill with the etching needle can be partially traced to his ability with a carving knife. As mentioned earlier, he had first intended to become a sculptor. Throughout his life he returned to sculpture and the high point in this particular art is the statue of Gustav Vasa in Mora, inaugurated in 1903.

Zorn's health deteriorated markedly during his last years. He died in 1920. The funeral was attended among others by representatives of the Swedish royal family and many cultural personalities.