Most of August Strindberg’s paintings were made in the period 1892 to 1905. After 1905, he more or less stopped painting. Not necessarily because his inspiration dried up, but perhaps because the theatre and literature pulled harder at him. Strindberg himself explained that he deliberately chose a canvas format modest enough to enable him to finish a painting in two or three hours – that is, before the inspiration had time to vanish. He often worked with a palette knife and claimed he did not even own any brushes at all.