Tête contre tête

In the summer of 1905 Norway broke its union with Sweden, and Munch, then 41, spent most of that year out of the country. He had just come through a brawl at Asgardstrand with the painter Ludvig Karsten, a friend turned rival, and after it he settled in Germany for years. The two heads set close together here are usually read as Munch himself beside Mathilde Larsen, called Tulla, the woman he had broken with in 1902 after a struggle over a pistol that cost him part of a finger on his left hand. He kept returning to the same pairing that year, in charcoal, in drypoint and in a woodcut, all of which ended up in the same Oslo collection as the painting.