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In August 1905 Norwegians voted, almost without dissent, to leave their union with Sweden, and for several tense weeks it looked as if the two countries might fight over it. Munch spent most of that year in Germany. He came home for the summer to his small house at Asgardstrand on the fjord and began a large portrait of the young painter Ludvig Karsten there. After a night of drinking the two men came to blows, and Munch left Norway again. He painted this head of himself at 41, in the same stretch of months, and for the next four years he worked out of German hotel rooms and rented lodgings rather than Norwegian ones.