This is a very rare etching by the Swedish artist Anders Zorn.
It is a fine drypoint etching by Zorn and is a beautiful portrait study of Mrs Frances Grover Cleveland (1864 - 1947), It relates to her oil portrait in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, USA. Mrs Gardner was a close friend and patron of Zorn - and he gifted her as a birthday present a large oil study for the finished portrait which is now in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery at the Smithsonian.
The sitter was married to President Grover Cleveland - and was the first lady of the United States from 1886 to 1889 (the dates Zorn painted her portrait). She served again for a non-consecutive second term from 1893 to 1897.
She was the first lady at the remarkably young age of 21 - and remains to this day, the youngest wife of a sitting president. She was married on June 2 1886 in the Blue Room of the Whitehouse.
No other first lady had been a celebrity before Frances Clara Folsom Cleveland. The media coverage of her White House wedding to President Grover Cleveland excited the romantic sentiments of many Americans. Almost overnight, the young bride became an icon.
Zorn shows Mrs Cleveland at age thirty-five at the couple’s home in Princeton, New Jersey. She wears one of her signature looks: a white satin and lace-ruffled gown revealing her bare shoulders and arms.
On offer for sale here is a rare drypoint study of First Lady Cleveland. An impression is also in the prestigious Prints and Drawings Collection of the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Works by Zorn always tend to command high prices - and this one is harder to source and is of interest not just to collectors of Zorn's etchings but also to collectors of items relating to American Presidential history.
My impression is a fine one - and I have had it professionally conserved before adding to my store - and it has been given a new fresh window mount - so it is in exemplary condition. The sheet it is printed on it nice and clean with no issues and the work has never been laid down or stuck onto a card backing - it remains as fine an impression as you might hope to find. I have taken lots of images for your inspection.
It is signed Zorn below in pencil and contains's the artist's monogram and date within the plate to the lower left: "ZORN / 1899"
Dimensions: Mount size is 38.5 x 27 cm. Image Size is 24.7 x 15.7 cm
Postage will be with Royal Mail Special Next Day Delivery. Tracked and insured in transit in the UK. This will cost £10 and will e applied to your order at checkout.