Testa d'uomo con barba

This is very early Munch. In 1882 he was 18 or 19, a beginner in Kristiania, today's Oslo, who had recently dropped an engineering course to paint. That autumn he rented a studio with six other young artists and worked at exactly this kind of thing, small quick head studies of whoever would sit, done on cheap board. The bearded man is set down straight and plain, in the muted browns of Norwegian naturalism, years before the swirling colour and raw feeling people now expect from the name Munch. These are the faces he learned his craft on, one plain sitter at a time.