As the images become more abstract, we start to see – and feel – this darkness creeping in. In her final years, which coincided with the second world war, Schjerfbeck produced about 20 abstracted portraits – the eyes ever-increasing in size and dominance. As my own eyes moved around the gallery walls and landed on such haunting images as Self-Portrait with Red Spot (1944) and Self-Portrait, Light and Shadow (1945), my body convulsed in an involuntary shudder. Unlike her portraits of others, the gaze in her self-portraits is nearly always direct. Even as the other facial aspects become more ghostly and spectral, seemingly melting away, the piercing eyes remain, dark and deathly.