Stina Forssell, born in Skelleftea, Sweden, grew up as an only child into a privileged family of doctors in Uddevalla. At school, her artistic talent was discovered early and her parents supported her to study art in Stockholm. She first studied at Edvard Berggren’s painting school in 1924. In the spring of 1927, she entered the art academy, part of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. She was ambitious and talented and received many accolades. In 1928 she received the Academy’s scholarship, a monetary reward, followed by more awards and recognition. In the early 1930s she lived in Paris where she studied at the Maison Watteau under Otte Sköld. Eventually, Forssell acquired a home and studio at Drottninggatan 34 in Stockholm, where many of her work was produced. Uncomfortable showing her art, Forssell did not agree to a single solo exhibition during her lifetime.

Little is known about Forssell’s life. She supported herself with commissions for portraits, caricatures and illustrations for books and newspapers. A large number of paintings and drawings show a dark-haired model whose identity is unknown. Recurring motifs are nude studies, half-length portraits and interiors with the model immersed in front of a mirror. Forssell’s artistic production remained in her possession until her death in a car accident in 1970, when some 650 of her works were bequeathed to the Bohuslän Museum in Uddevalla. With the majority of her artistic output in one institution and her own refusal to participate in the artworld during her lifetime, Forssell is quite an enigma. Indifferent to the glamor of high society, the present strong self-portrait reveals the artist’s reflective soul rather than beauty or attributes of mundane life in the artist’s studio. The realist idiom of Forssell’s self portrait is representative of The New Objectivity of the 1920s, breaking with modernism’s development towards abstraction.