Autoportrait avec une bouteille de vin

By 1906 Munch was a success across Germany and privately falling apart. He was drinking hard, his nerves were fraying, and over these few years he painted himself again and again as a lonely man. He made this one in the quiet town of Weimar. He sits alone at a restaurant table with a bottle of wine, a glass, and a plate, his hands folded and helpless in his lap, while a hot red wall presses up behind his head. Two waiters stand back to back in the shadows, fused as if they shared one body. Two years later Munch broke down completely and checked into a nerve clinic in Copenhagen, where he dried out and, when he returned to work, began painting in brighter, calmer colors.