Tulla Larsen

Tulla Larsen was the daughter of a rich wine merchant in Kristiania, the city now called Oslo, and when she met Munch in 1898 she had money, time and the intention of marrying him. He was in his mid-30s and not inclined to marry anybody. This full-length portrait belongs to the first year or two of that, 1898 or 1899, and it is unsigned, like a great deal of what he made and then held on to. The affair ran about four years. It ended in 1902 with a pistol going off in a room the two of them were in, and Munch losing part of the middle finger of his left hand. Accounts of how that happened have never agreed.