Self-Portrait under the Mask of a Woman

In 1893 Munch was living in Berlin, a year after the city's artists' association had closed his exhibition within a week of its opening. That year he painted The Scream, and by December he was showing a group of pictures he called a study for a series on love. This self-portrait belongs to the same season. He faces us head-on, in a dark suit and a stiff white collar, calm and rather formal. Above his head hangs a woman's face, painted as a mask. Munch did not let that face go. In Woman, also known as The Sphinx, begun the same year, the mask returns as a red-haired nude. He painted this picture in tempera straight onto an unprimed wooden panel.