Karen Bjølstad

In the late summer and autumn of 1888 Munch spent long stretches at Vrengen, a narrow sound on the Oslofjord near Tønsberg, and this portrait is thought to be one of the pictures he began there. His aunt Karen Bjølstad sits out of doors, hands folded on a white apron, with the wall of a house on one side and a garden on the other. Karen had kept the Munch household running since Edvard's mother died, and money in that house was always tight. She helped with her own hands, making pictures out of moss, twigs and other things gathered outdoors, often of stave churches, and selling them through a crafts shop and a travel agency in Kristiania. Munch signed and dated this canvas 1888 in the lower right corner. He later wrote that she was probably the person who did most to make him a painter.