Portrait of a Young Woman

In 1912 Else Berg and her partner, the painter Mommie Schwarz, travelled through Italy, and according to the Frans Hals Museum this young woman was painted on that journey. The museum dates the canvas to about 1913. Back in Amsterdam, Berg showed her newest work at the exhibitions that artists' societies held in the Stedelijk Museum, and reviewers called the pictures ultramodern apparitions. The sitter's long face and almond-shaped eyes recall the portraits of Amedeo Modigliani, the Italian painter then working in Paris, and the museum thinks Berg probably saw his work either in Italy or earlier in Paris. The painting came to Haarlem only recently, a gift from the descendants of Professor F. P. Scott and his wife Dora, of Bloemfontein in South Africa.