Who was the artist behind The Scream?
Edvard Munch was a daring portraitist who used his wide social circle to capture an era
A visitor observes Hans Jæger (1889) by Edvard Munch, displayed as part of the exhibition Edvard Munch Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery. Copyright David Parry.
How many art works have inspired a popular emoji? I can name only two – Munch’s Scream 😱 and Hiroshige’s Wave 🌊.
The Scream (1893) has become so widely known and imitated, that the artist who painted it has been almost obscured by its celebrity. But who was the man behind the iconic image of dread and despair? Was he a depressed loner, rejected and ignored by society? Edvard Munch Portraits exhibition at London’s National Portrait Gallery shows us that he wasn’t.
These works take us on a journey through Munch’s life, his changing art style and technique, and his social interactions – and in doing so also reveal the context in which the artist and his sitters lived.
The exhibition questions the perception of Munch as a neurotic, mentally unstable, alcoholic artist. While not denying that he was all those, it highlights that he also had a long and successful career. He was a well-connected and canny businessman with six decades worth of art works to show for himself.
Arranged in chronological order, the exhibition first shows us Munch as a man devoted to and grateful for his family, many members of which he lost to illness. Then, he is a young artist who enjoys mingling in the bohemian circles of Kristiania (Oslo), Paris and Berlin. Later, he becomes a famous and sought-after portraitist to Berlin’s liberal elites. Finally, he dedicates himself to experimentation and new ways of painting by depicting close friends and occasional strangers back in newly independent Norway.
Edvard Munch, Karen Bjølstad, 1885-6, Oil on canvas, Kode Bergen Art Museum. Photo Tiesennotes
In early works, such as the portrait of his aunt, he was influenced by the ‘naturalist’ way of painting. The colours are sombre and muted. Munch’s aunt played a key role in him becoming an artist – encouraging him, contradicting his father’s choice of a suitable profession, and even sending money to support his travels. In the portrait she has no eye contact with the viewer; she’s possibly occupied by one of her own artistic projects. The portrait served as a reference for one of Munch’s haunting works The Sick Child (1885-6) painted the same year. This shows a close link between Munch’s portraits and his other paintings in which he explored human emotions and suffering.
In the same period Munch painted the writer and anarchist Hans Jæger – a striking work that couples the nonchalant posture of the sitter with a confrontational gaze fixed directly at the viewer. A key figure in Kristiania’s bohemian world, Jæger influenced the direction of Munch’s art and yet, as the portrait suggests, Munch was wary of his sway.
Edvard Munch, Aase and Harald Nørregaard, 1899, Oil on canvas, The National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo. Photo Tiesennotes.
In a double portrait of his friends Aase and Harald Nørregaard, Munch can be seen moving away from naturalism and exploring the new style he termed ‘soul art’ – a combination of a more fluid, painterly style and an intense psychological exploration of the sitters. Munch liked to play with gazes – in this example the woman (who Munch considered one of his closest female friends) is looking straight ahead, seemingly towards the viewer, but not at them. The husband is shown in profile, looking at his wife, or beyond her. The paint around the two figures seems to indicate a flow of energy – an almost tangible emotional feeling.
In his early career, Munch did not make commissioned portraits – which allowed him to experiment and challenge existing ways of painting. Moving to Berlin changed his outlook – he was now socialising with a group of wealthy patrons, who read Nietzsche and commissioned art. Their philosophy of a godless world and human will to power differed dramatically to that of Munch’s upbringing, but he was interested and subscribed to it.
A visitor observes Felix Auerbach (1906) by Edvard Munch, displayed as part of the exhibition Edvard Munch Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery. Copyright David Parry.
The portraits became grander and more daring in colour and technique. But they differed greatly in the way the sitters were treated. Physics professor Felix Auerbach is shown sporting a cigar on a fiery red background – a homage to Munch’s hero van Gogh. An unfinished portrait of banker Ernest Thiel shows him standing, arms folded, against an icy-blue backdrop. Munch was so overcome with anger while painting him that he punched the canvas. And yet, Thiel was one of his most important patrons.
Edvard Munch, Ernest Thiel, 1907, Oil on canvas, Thielska Galleriet, Stockholm. Photo Tiesennotes.
Munch’s success brought with it the usual pitfalls. In 1908 he had a mental breakdown following a busy schedule of exhibiting, moving around, and drinking. He was admitted to a clinic but continued to work. His paintings become wilder, colours brighter, brushstrokes freer. In the words of the show’s curator Dr Alison Smith, at that time he ‘separates the brushstrokes from what they are depicting’.
Edvard Munch, Henriette Olsen, 1932, Oil on canvas, Siem Group. Photo Tiesennotes.
He returns to Norway a broken, but famous man – a national treasure. The diverse range of sitters shows just how wide his social circle became: from complete strangers and servants to wealthy Norwegian families and, most crucially, his close friends and supporters. The portraits of the latter he kept for himself. One reason suggested is that he wanted to keep those people close to him; I suspect some sitters may not have been very happy with their likenesses.
A visitor observes Jappe Nilssen (1909) by Edvard Munch, displayed as part of the exhibition Edvard Munch Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery. Copyright David Parry.
Jappe Nilssen – in Munch’s own words, his ‘glorious hero’ – pointed out that ‘He has given full reign to his vicious side and could easily have painted a more beautiful portrait.’ Nilssen appeared in Munch’s paintings of emotions – specifically in his many variants of Melancholy (1891). Perhaps it is this closeness and friendship that allowed Munch to paint Nilssen exactly how he wanted. His style and technique at that time vary tremendously – from very loose washes with paint dripping along the canvas in one/some, to heavy thick swirls of paint in another.
This is an exhibition that tells three stories in one. First it is the story of the artist behind The Scream. Second, it tells us of a changing Europe at the turn of the century. Thirdly, it is the story of art that was transformed by these changes. Each one of these stories alone would be enough to make this show worth seeing. I think it’s one of the most thought-provoking shows of 2025.