Olga Buhre

Munch painted this portrait in 1891, and the date matters more than the quiet surface suggests. That was the year the young Norwegian, moving between Kristiania and the French coast on state travel grants, was at work on Melancholy, the brooding shoreline picture now read as his first real step toward the Frieze of Life and, further off, The Scream. Set beside that, this is a sober commission, a woman in a dark dress against a dark ground, her pale face and hands the only things that catch the light. He was in his late twenties and still took such work as it came. About the sitter, Olga Buhre, almost nothing survives beyond her name and this steady, guarded look.