To become a famous Nordic painter, it helped to be born between 1860 and 1865. Hilma af Klint, Edvard Munch, Vilhelm Hammershøi, and Akseli Gallen-Kallela all understood this; so did Schjerfbeck, who arrived in 1862. As a child, she fell down some stairs and broke her hip. The injury left her with a permanent limp, creating an open invitation for every art historian and critic to psychologize her paintings as disguised self-portraits of suffering. Her father, a downwardly mobile civil servant, gave her pencils, paper, and crayons as she convalesced, and what started as art therapy turned into a calling. From an early age, she was plied with scholarships, travel grants, prizes, and exhibition opportunities. When she turned eighteen, she took a steamboat to Paris.