Halvard Stub Holmboe

Halvard Stub Holmboe of 1887, at the Art Museums of Bergen, is a portrait of a member of a Norwegian family with whom Munch had personal connections. Bergen's art museums hold significant Norwegian nineteenth-century works, and this early Munch serves as evidence of the artist's development within the national tradition before his European encounters transformed his art. Holmboe appears to be a young man of the educated middle class, and Munch's treatment follows the conventions of the informal portrait he was developing alongside the more experimental works of the same year. The Bergen location of the painting reflects the pattern of Norwegian institutional collecting that distributed early Munch works across the country's regional museums rather than centralising them entirely in Oslo.

The portrait demonstrates Munch's reliable command of the conventions of informal portraiture: a three-quarter view, adequate tonal modelling of the face, and a background handled simply to avoid competing with the figure. The early technique has a fresh directness that anticipates the looser handling of his post-1890 work.