Self-Portrait with Cigarette

In this painting, Munch celebrates himself as an artist. The picture is large, with a format that itself signals ambition. He had good reason to be happy with the way his career was developing. He was thirty-two years old, living in Berlin and part of a circle that included several prominent artists and intellectuals. Despite his relatively young age, he could already look back on many exhibitions that had been positively reviewed and from which he had sold many pictures. His work was controversial, but first and foremost he was a young man enjoying success. Although the setting is indistinct, the figure appears to be standing in a smoky room. It is dark except for the light from a low source that creates a dramatic effect. The face and the right hand holding the cigarette, the painting hand, stand out clearly against the otherwise sombre surface.

Self-promotion was something Munch worked on throughout his sixty-year career. His self-portraits number almost sixty. *Self-Portrait with Cigarette *is central to this genre. Since the 1950s, the work has featured in many exhibitions, and over the years it has assumed an increasingly important place in the Munch literature. It has been argued that with this portrait he consciously identifies himself as a Bohemian. For one thing, it has been pointed out that the cigarette was associated with Bohemian culture, modernity and a decadent lifestyle (Berman 1993, 17). The work has been compared to Christian Krohg's Portrait of Gerhard Munthe, painted ten years earlier. In both cases the subject is rendered half-length holding a cigarette in a smoky room. The difference lies in the respective settings. In Krohg's portrait of Munthe it is immediately obvious that the subject is in a café. In his self-portrait, Munch uses the colours and diffuse brushwork to evoke a mysterious atmosphere and to demonstrate his allegiance to the new symbolist direction (Müller-Westermann 1997, 47).

The picture was shown for the first time in Berlin the year it was painted. In autumn 1895 it was exhibited at Blomqvist in Kristiania (Oslo). Several of the paintings in the latter solo exhibition, including the self-portrait, became the subject of heated debate in the Norwegian press. The poet Sigbjørn Obstfelder, a friend of Munch, held a lecture at the Studentersamfundet (the Students' Association) on 9 November 1895, in which he defended Munch and countered the harsh criticism levelled at the exhibition. In the discussion that followed the lecture, the medical student Johan Scharffenberg publically questioned Munch's mental state, making specific reference to *Self-Portrait with Cigarette *(Mørstad 2006 B, 108). In response, Obstfelder wrote the article "Edvard Munch. Et forsøk" (Edvard Munch. An Essay), which appeared in *Samtiden *the following year (1896). In this he discusses the self-portrait as new and different: "... his self-portrait represents a painting of the soul rather than of facial traits, a work of wondrously profound beauty rather than observational truth." Obstfelder also noted a parallel to Rembrandt's self-portraits: "... because they also reveal the inner state through the use of the artist's proper medium ..." (Obstfelder 1896, 18).

The painting was purchased on the occasion of the exhibition at Blomqvist in 1895. It was the artist himself who approached the National Gallery, with an offer to sell several pictures. The other paintings in that offer were *Spring *(Nasjonalmuseet, NG.M.00498), *The Sick Child * (Nasjonalmuseet, NG.M.00839) and *Soloppgang * (Sunrise). The fact that the artist wanted to be represented in the National Gallery in terms of this self-portrait suggests he considered the work important. The painting is unusual among Munch's major works in that he never produced another version of it, either in paint or as a print. We also know of no preliminary studies or sketches for this work.

Vibeke Waallann Hansen The text was first published in Edvard Munch in the National Museum. A comprehensive overview (Oslo: National Museum, 2022).

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