Carl Larsson was deeply attached to his mother, Johanna, but his difficult childhood had caused some tension in their relationship. In his autobiography, written many years after her death, he notes: “But look at the small watercolour portrait of my mother in her old age, which is now hanging at the Nationalmuseum. Is she not blithe! She loves both her son and everyone else, that ugly, old, biddy. Whom I once thought so fair!”