Provenance: By descent in the Swane family.

In the summer of 1885, Alhed Larsen née Warberg was a student of the Funen Painter Fritz Syberg (1862–1939), who was a source of great inspiration for her. From 1890 to 1893 she took drawing lessons from the sculptor Ludvig Brandstrup (1861–1935) and in 1890 she was also accepted as an apprentice glaze painter under Arnold Krog (1856–1931) at Den Kgl. Porcelænsfabrik (The Royal Porcelain Factory) and continued here until 1893. She was in Italy from 1893 to ‘94 for a period of over a year and again in 1898. 1898 was also the year she married the artist Johannes Larsen (1867–1961) and the work of keeping the large house and artist centre at Møllebakken running, combined with her early death in 1927, certainly contributed to the relatively small scale of her artistic production.

While she initially worked in oils, especially landscapes, garden scenes and floral arrangements often in coloured glass, she probably first tried working with pastels in 1918. In the following years, she developed a playful and modern expression in her work with pastels, where the vibrant colours in a quivering, restless line play against the brown ground of the paper.

Alhed Larsen travelled to Paris, America, Stockholm and Germany every few years, as well as several stays at the Swedish family farm in Båxhult. She made her debut at Charlottenborg in 1900 and subsequently exhibited several times, including a solo exhibition at Den Frie in 1912 with Christine Swane (1876–1960) and Anna Syberg (1870–1914) and in 1922 with Asta Krohn (1872–1951) and Christine Swane.

In 1941, she exhibited 8 pastels at an exhibition together with Johannes Larsen. In the pastel offered at this auction, we see her loose trembling line and the striking contrasts between the brown paper and the luminous colours.