Self-Portrait with Hand in Pocket

On 1 January 1925 the Norwegian capital Kristiania officially took back its medieval name, Oslo. Munch was living just outside the city at Ekely, a former market-garden estate he had bought in 1916, and in these years he painted himself several times inside the house. Here he is in his early 60s, standing in one of Ekely's rooms in a suit, a hand pushed into his trouser pocket. There is no signature anywhere on the canvas. The Munch Museum dates it to 1925 and 1926 and groups it with other self-portraits set in the rooms of Ekely in the same years, among them one at a wedding table and one with his dogs.