Hanni Esche

In the autumn of 1905 Munch came to Chemnitz, a Saxon textile town, to paint the family of the manufacturer Herbert Esche. The invitation came from Hanni Esche herself. She had seen the portraits the Belgian designer Henry van de Velde made of his own family, asked for the painter's address, and wrote to Munch, who accepted in unsteady German. Then he arrived and did nothing. For three weeks he sat in inns around the town without touching a brush, until the worried family sent for van de Velde, who had built their house a few years earlier. Once Munch started, eight paintings came in a matter of days, and this portrait of Hanni is one of them. He was 41. The villa van de Velde built still stands in Chemnitz, and the portrait of the woman who wrote the letter ended up in Munich.