Man with Straw Hat

Man with Straw Hat from 1902 depicts a male figure in summer dress — the straw hat being the definitive accessory of European bourgeois summer leisure at the turn of the century — in a work that balances casual observation with Munch's characteristic psychological intensity. The straw hat's association with summer ease and social relaxation placed the sitter in the world of Åsgårdstrand summer life that Munch observed and participated in, and the informality of the outdoor or casual setting gave him a different register from his formal portrait commissions. The Munch Museum holds this as part of its collection of informal figure studies.

Munch paints the Man with Straw Hat with a relatively relaxed, plein-air quality — the summer light rendered in warm tones, the straw hat itself treated with the textural looseness appropriate to its woven surface, the overall impression one of direct, uncomplicated observation rather than Symbolist intensity.