Self Portraits

The self-portrait as a genre originated in the Renaissance as a result of the artist?s newly acquired social status. Self-representation began almost imperceptibly in the latter half of the fourteenth century, as artists portrayed themselves as - often peripheral - actors in narrative paintings. Later a number of painters followed this example, among them Ghirlandaio, Botticelli and Rafael. Well known is the latter?s presence in "The School of Athens", where he is looking straight at us, from his position by the right-side pillar. Gradually, the self-portrait as such became an accepted and recognized part of the artist?s work, and Titian?s, Dürer?s, Rembrandt?s and later Van Gogh?s self-portraits are important and fundamental works in their oeuvre.

In his self portraits Munch examined his role as an artist, his relationship to his environment and the society. He exposed his existential angst in these works, taking as his themes his attitudes to life and death, love and sexuality. In the latter half of his life, he became intensely occupied with loneliness and sickness, focusing in his later years particularly on the old man and death. Between the start of his career in the 1880's and his death in 1944, he produced more than 70 painted self-portraits and some 20 in the graphic medium, as well as more than a hundred water-colours, drawings and studies.