A gentle early 20th-century portrait of a woman by Swedish painter, Birgit Hygrell (1903-1972).

Hygrell was a versatile and widely-exhibited painter who studied in Gothenburg and later at the Stockholm School of Art. This particular piece was created just two years after she left Stockholm at the age of 24.

It’s inscribed in the lower left ‘Till Tant Ester’, which translates as ’To Aunt Ester’. Could it be a self-portrait perhaps? Or is it Aunt Ester herself?

The portrait is signed and dated in the lower right.