Marius Selmer

Marius Selmer of 1888 is a portrait of a Norwegian public figure whose commission connected Munch to the professional and cultural networks of Kristiania society. Like the other 1885-88 portraits, it documents his activity as a conventional portraitist serving middle and upper-class Norwegian clients before his radical symbolic turn made him simultaneously more famous and more controversial in Oslo's art world. The 1888 date places this work in the Paris-influenced transitional year when his handling was becoming more assured without yet taking the bold formal risks of his 1890s mature work.

The portrait shows Munch's growing confidence in facial modelling, with the warm-cool tonal variation in the flesh areas handled more freely than in the earlier academic works from three years before. The background is treated with greater painterly looseness, suggesting his evolving instinct to subordinate secondary areas to the expressive priority of the face.