Edvard Munch Portraits

Edvard Munch was, contrary to the impression one might get from his most famous painting, a sociable, gregarious character. That is the thesis put forward by the National Portrait Gallery in this exhibition of more than 40 of Munch’s portraits of friends, family, peers, patrons, collectors and himself, which highlights the extensive network of acquaintances the artist made and the ways in which he honed and adapted his painting techniques over the course of his long career (13 March–15 June). Bringing together works on loan from Norway, Spain, the Netherlands and elsewhere, the show tracks Munch’s development from his naturalistic early portraits to his Symbolist works of the 1890s, and then to the portraits he produced in the first decades of the 20th century, which tend to be more wildly colourful and often incorporate more abstract elements. Visitors can also see for the first time in Britain Munch’s portrait of the lawyer Thor Lütken (1893), which was long presumed lost and rediscovered only in 2022, and his depiction of the physicist Felix Auerbach (1906) against a vivid red background.

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Find out more from the National Portrait Gallery’s website

Andreas Munch Studying Anatomy (1886), Edvard Munch. Photo: Juri Kobayashi; © Munchmuseet

Felix Auerbach (1906), Edvard Munch. Photo: © Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)

Jappe Nilssen (1909), Edvard Munch. Photo: Juri Kobayashi; © Munchmuseet

Seated Model on the Couch, Birtgit Prestøe (1924), Edvard Munch. Photo: Sidsel de Jong/Munchmuseet