The National Portrait Gallery staged the first UK exhibition on Edvard Munch as a portraitist, forty works on family, bohemia, patrons and friends.
The National Portrait Gallery on Trafalgar Square showed Edvard Munch as a portraitist from Thursday 13 March to Sunday 15 June 2025. It was the first exhibition in the UK to concentrate on that part of his work.
Munch was born in 1863 at Ådalsbruk in Norway, and died in 1944. His 1893 painting The Scream is one of the most acclaimed images in Western art, and its fame has long overshadowed the rest of his work.
He also painted self-portraits and portraits of family, friends, lovers, writers, artists, patrons and collectors. He worked with energetic brushwork, bold colour and a direct engagement with the sitter.
The show brought together 40 of his most significant portraits and showed how he painted some as commissions and others for personal reasons. Loans from the Nasjonalmuseet in Oslo included a self-portrait of 1882 to 1883 and his 1889 portrait of the writer Hans Jaeger.
Four themes organised the rooms: Family, Bohemia, Collectors and Patrons, and Friends and Lifeguards. The story closed on Munch’s return to Norway in 1909, after a breakdown and a stay in hospital.
Alison Smith wrote the accompanying book, with Knut Ljøgodt as curatorial advisor.