Restaurabits

If you look at the reverse of the work, you will be surprised to see a design sketched in black. It is a face with the eyes, the line of the nose and the outline of the right side clearly marked. More curious still is that the same design is repeated on the front of the painting. Münter used a very similar type of stroke on both sides of the support, reproducing the forms and proportions, as if to create an identical design on the back and front of the painting.

We made a tracing of the drawing on the reverse and, on positioning it over the face of the self-portrait painted in oils, found it to be an exact match. This suggests that the artist may have used a tracing as a guide when creating her self-portrait.