National Portrait Gallery stages its first ever exhibition of portraits by Edvard Munch, featuring works never displayed before in the UK.
Opening on 13 March 2025, Edvard Munch Portraits will be the first exhibition in the UK to focus exclusively on Munch as a portraitist, including works never seen in the UK such as Munch’s portraits of lawyer Thor Lütken and physicist Felix Auerbach.
Curated by Alison Smith, previously Chief Curator of the National Portrait Gallery and now Director of Collections and Research at the Wallace Collection, the exhibition will show how Munch (1863-1944) painted portraits as commissions and for personal reasons, with many pictures doubling up as icons or archetypes of the human condition despite being based on the direct observation of named individuals. Contrary to the typical portrayal of Munch as an artist isolated from the mainstream, he will be presented as a social being, exploring his wide network of creative contacts across Scandinavia and Northern Europe.
Including more than 40 works, the exhibition is arranged thematically and chronologically, taking visitors on a four-part journey through Munch’s immediate family, his interactions with bohemian radicals, his patrons and collectors and finally his closest confidants, the so-called ‘Guardians’.
This exhibition is made possible with key loans from major museums and private collections internationally including Munchmuseet (Oslo), Kode Bergen Art Museum (Bergen), Gothenburg Museum of Art (Gothenberg), Kulturstiftung Sachsen-Anhalt, Kunstmuseum Moritzburg Halle (Saale), Moderna Museet (Stockholm), Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza (Madrid), Nasjonalmuseet: The National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design (Oslo), Oslo Museum (Oslo), Statens Museum for Kunst (Copenhagen), Thielska Galleriet (Stockholm), The British Museum (London), and The Van Gogh Museum (Amsterdam).
The exhibition will be accompanied by a publication of the same name by Alison Smith, with contributions from the Norwegian art historian Knut Ljøgodt.
Edvard Munch Portraits: 13 March – 15 June 2025
National Portrait Gallery, St Martin’s Place, London, WC2H 0HE
Open daily: 10.30 – 18.00
Friday & Saturday: 10.30 – 21.00
Tickets: £21, concessions available. Members go free
Further Information: Edvard Munch Portraits - National Portrait Gallery