Portrait of the Painter Jensen Hjell

Edvard Munch painted the portrait of his fellow artist Karl Jensen-Hjell in 1885, when Munch was just twenty-two years old. The work shows a bearded man seated in a dark interior, his gaze direct and penetrating. It belongs to Munch's early naturalist period, years before he would develop the expressive, psychologically charged style that made him famous.

Jensen-Hjell was part of the bohemian artist circle in Kristiania (now Oslo) that Munch moved through in his youth. The dark palette and careful attention to the sitter's features demonstrate Munch's solid grounding in traditional portrait techniques. The somber background pushes the viewer's attention entirely onto the subject's face and hands, creating an intimate psychological study despite its conventional format.

The painting now hangs at the National Gallery of Norway in Oslo, where it sits alongside Munch's more famous later works including The Scream. Seeing this early portrait next to his expressionist major works reveals just how dramatically his style would evolve over the following decade.