Media Release
For Immediate Release
London | +44 (0)20 7293 6000 | Matthew Floris | [email protected]
Mitzi Mina | [email protected]
New York | +1 212 606 7176 | Lauren Gioia | [email protected]
Two Momentous Graphic Works by Edvard Munch
Two Human Beings. The Lonely Ones and Self-Portrait
Acquired directly from the Artist
This September, Sotheby’s will offer at auction two momentous graphic works by Edvard Munch:
Two Human Beings. The Lonely Ones and Self-Portrait, both acquired directly from the artist by
two of his most ardent supporters. Self-Portrait comes to sale from a private Norwegian
collection and was originally owned by Olaf Schou, the Norwegian industrialist and art patron;
Two Human Beings. The Lonely Ones was purchased directly from Munch in 1942 by Harald Holst
Halvorsen. Estimated respectively at £50,000-70,000 and £400,000-600,000, they will be offered
as part of Sotheby’s Prints & Multiples sale in London on 27 September 2016, having never
previously appeared at auction.
Lucy Rosenburgh, Sotheby’s Prints Specialist, said: “Schou and Halvorsen were two of Munch’s
most important patrons, with whom he enjoyed an equally strong friendship. The notable
provenance of these prints makes their appearance on the market all the more appealing to
collectors.”
The Lonely Ones (est. £400,000-600,000) depicts two figures standing on the shore at
Åsgårdstrand looking out to the expanse of ocean in front of them. Produced in 1899, this dreamlike impression features a striking combination of colours – turquoise-blue, reddish-brown, and
golden yellow – which give the work an ethereal quality. Munch separated the human beings
from one another through the process of the print’s production: he employed a jigsaw technique
in the woodcut, sawing the block into sections to be inked separately, before reassembling them
to be printed together. In this variation of the subject, Munch complicates the meaning of the
work with a further compositional technique. Using a stencil, he applied a middle ground to the
shore in brown ink with hints of green, thereby drawing the man and the woman together by the
band of colour. As such, while Munch’s jigsaw technique disconnects the figures, they are
simultaneously united by the ground that they stand on. Munch’s processes serve to emphasise
the emotional divide between the figures and the atmosphere of existential loneliness that the
work conjures.
Harald Holst Halvorsen was a good friend of Munch’s. The two men corresponded frequently,
and Halvorsen’s letters to Munch survive, chronicling his enduring desire to obtain works by
Munch both for his clients and for his personal collection. Halvorsen expressed his interest in
Munch’s coloured prints, specifically mentioning The Lonely Ones on multiple occasions.
According to the letters, on 23 February 1942 (months after he initially expressed interest in the
subject), Halvorsen’s desire for a coloured print was fulfilled when he purchased two impressions
of The Lonely Ones directly from the artist. Halvorsen must have found the impression on offer in
Sotheby’s sale particularly desirable, since he kept it for his private collection – the lower right
margin bears an ink inscription, Acquired from Edv. Munch 23. Feb. 1942 / Harald Holst
Halvorsen. The woodcut changed hands in the 1970s when the current owner acquired it from a
gallery in Oslo.
Munch created Self-Portrait (est. £50,000-70,000) in Berlin in the autumn of 1895, at the age of
31. The subject constitutes an outward and physical representation of the artist, which,
regardless of its Symbolist references to mortality, depicts Munch in a state of quiet composure.
Olaf Schou (1861-1925) was particularly taken with Munch’s work, and beginning in the 1880s he
provided him with financial support whilst purchasing his works regularly at exhibitions. The
relationship between artist and patron was one of mutual respect, and over time Munch began
reserving some of his most important works for his ardent and long-time proponent, including
The Scream of 1893. Schou acquired Self-Portrait directly from Munch circa 1900, together with a
lithograph of The Scream by the artist. It was subsequently inherited by Olaf’s brother, Christian
Schou, and thence by descent it passed into the collection of the present owners. Having built a
strong relationship with Jens Thiis (1870-1942), the Director of the National Gallery in Oslo, Schou
donated more than 100 works by Munch and other artists to the museum between 1909 and
1910. This endowment comprised Munch’s major paintings Madonna (1894–95), The Sick Child
(1896), and The Girls on the Pier (circa 1901), and the artist’s most iconic work: the 1893 tempera
and crayon version of The Scream.
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Notes to Editors
In 2012 in New York, Sotheby’s sold Edvard Munch’s 1895 pastel on board version of The
Scream – from the Olsen Collection – for $120 million. Munch created four versions of The
Scream. The prime example, worked in 1893 from tempera and crayon on board, was gifted
in 1910 by Olaf Schou to the National Gallery of Norway; another pastel version from the
same year is thought to be a preliminary sketch for the work, and is owned by the Munch
Museum in Oslo; a later version in tempera and oil on board, thought to be completed in
1910, is also in the collection of the Munch Museum.
In 2016 in London, Sotheby’s sold a lithograph of Edvard Munch’s The Scream – originally
owned by Olaf Schou – for £1.8 million / $2.7 million (estimate £800,000-1,200,000), a price
which established a record for an impression (print) of Munch’s The Scream at auction.
Sotheby’s sale of Prints & Multiples in London on 27 September 2016 features a further work
by Munch: Attraction I, lithograph, 1896, estimate £35,000-45,000.
From 28 September – 15 October 2016, Paul Stolper Gallery will present ‘Texture’, a
portfolio of ten prints by Her Majesty Queen Sonja of Norway and Magne Furuholmen,
made in support of The Queen Sonja Print Award. The portfolio consists of four individual
prints by each artist in an edition of sixty, of which numbers one to twenty are available
as a portfolio and the rest individually. There are also two prints in an edition of twenty,
made exclusively for the portfolio, signed by both Her Majesty Queen Sonja of Norway
and Magne Furuholmen. The prints are a combination of etching and photo-polymer, size
50 x 50 cm on 310g Somerset White Satin, printed at Ateljé Larsen in Helsingborg,
Sweden, 2015. ‘Texture’ is an artistic collaboration, both thematically and literally of Her
Majesty Queen Sonja and Magne Furuholmen. For more information, please click here.
The Queen Sonja Print Award was founded by HM Queen Sonja of Norway and renowned
Norwegian artists Kjell Nupen and Ønulf Opdahl, together with master printer Ole Larsen
in 2011. It is the largest international print award, bestowed biannually, and given to an
emerging artist working within printmaking. The recipient of the first International Print
Award, 2016, is Tauba Auerbach.
On 26 September 2016, Sotheby’s London will host a Charity Auction and Reception in
support of the Queen Sonja Print Award. The auction will include collaborative prints by
HM Queen Sonja and Norwegian artist Magne Furuholmen. HM Queen Sonja and Magne
Furuholmen have since 2014 collaborated on a joint art-project in support of Her
Majesty’s foundation, QSPA. The charity auction includes work by HM Queen Sonja /
Magne Furuholmen, HM Queen Sonja, Tauba Auerbach, Peter Blake, Carroll Dunham, and
Pablo Picasso.
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