Sothebys : Two Momentous Graphic Works by Edvard Munch

Media Release For Immediate Release

London | +44 (0)20 7293 6000 | Matthew Floris | Matthew.Floris@sothebys.com Mitzi Mina | Mitzi.Mina@sothebys.com

New York | +1 212 606 7176 | Lauren Gioia | Lauren.Gioia@sothebys.com

Two Momentous Graphic Works by Edvard Munch

Two Human Beings. The Lonely Ones and Self-Portrait

Acquired directly from the Artist

This September, Sotheby's will offer at auction two momentous graphic works by Edvard Munch: Two Human Beings. The Lonely Ones and Self-Portrait, both acquired directly from the artist by two of his most ardent supporters. Self-Portrait comes to sale from a private Norwegian collection and was originally owned by Olaf Schou, the Norwegian industrialist and art patron; Two Human Beings. The Lonely Ones was purchased directly from Munch in 1942 by Harald Holst Halvorsen. Estimated respectively at £50,000-70,000 and £400,000-600,000, they will be offered as part of Sotheby's Prints & Multiples sale in London on 27 September 2016, having never previously appeared at auction.

Lucy Rosenburgh, Sotheby's Prints Specialist, said: "Schou and Halvorsen were two of Munch's most important patrons, with whom he enjoyed an equally strong friendship. The notable provenance of these prints makes their appearance on the market all the more appealing to collectors."

The Lonely Ones (est. £400,000-600,000) depicts two figures standing on the shore at Åsgårdstrand looking out to the expanse of ocean in front of them. Produced in 1899, this dream- like impression features a striking combination of colours - turquoise-blue, reddish-brown, and golden yellow - which give the work an ethereal quality. Munch separated the human beings from one another through the process of the print's production: he employed a jigsaw technique in the woodcut, sawing the block into sections to be inked separately, before reassembling them to be printed together. In this variation of the subject, Munch complicates the meaning of the work with a further compositional technique. Using a stencil, he applied a middle ground to the shore in brown ink with hints of green, thereby drawing the man and the woman together by the band of colour. As such, while Munch's jigsaw technique disconnects the figures, they are simultaneously united by the ground that they stand on. Munch's processes serve to emphasise the emotional divide between the figures and the atmosphere of existential loneliness that the work conjures.

Harald Holst Halvorsen was a good friend of Munch's. The two men corresponded frequently, and Halvorsen's letters to Munch survive, chronicling his enduring desire to obtain works by Munch both for his clients and for his personal collection. Halvorsen expressed his interest in Munch's coloured prints, specifically mentioning The Lonely Ones on multiple occasions. According to the letters, on 23 February 1942 (months after he initially expressed interest in the subject), Halvorsen's desire for a coloured print was fulfilled when he purchased two impressions of The Lonely Ones directly from the artist. Halvorsen must have found the impression on offer in Sotheby's sale particularly desirable, since he kept it for his private collection - the lower right margin bears an ink inscription, Acquired from Edv. Munch 23. Feb. 1942 / Harald Holst Halvorsen. The woodcut changed hands in the 1970s when the current owner acquired it from a gallery in Oslo.

Munch created Self-Portrait (est. £50,000-70,000) in Berlin in the autumn of 1895, at the age of

31. The subject constitutes an outward and physical representation of the artist, which, regardless of its Symbolist references to mortality, depicts Munch in a state of quiet composure.

Olaf Schou (1861-1925) was particularly taken with Munch's work, and beginning in the 1880s he provided him with financial support whilst purchasing his works regularly at exhibitions. The relationship between artist and patron was one of mutual respect, and over time Munch began reserving some of his most important works for his ardent and long-time proponent, including The Scream of 1893. Schou acquired Self-Portrait directly from Munch circa 1900, together with a lithograph of The Scream by the artist. It was subsequently inherited by Olaf's brother, Christian Schou, and thence by descent it passed into the collection of the present owners. Having built a strong relationship with Jens Thiis (1870-1942), the Director of the National Gallery in Oslo, Schou donated more than 100 works by Munch and other artists to the museum between 1909 and 1910. This endowment comprised Munch's major paintings Madonna (1894-95), The Sick Child (1896), and The Girls on the Pier (circa 1901), and the artist's most iconic work: the 1893 tempera and crayon version of The Scream.

# # #

Notes to Editors

In 2012 in New York, Sotheby's sold Edvard Munch's 1895 pastel on board version of The Scream - from the Olsen Collection - for $120 million. Munch created four versions of The Scream. The prime example, worked in 1893 from tempera and crayon on board, was gifted in 1910 by Olaf Schou to the National Gallery of Norway; another pastel version from the same year is thought to be a preliminary sketch for the work, and is owned by the Munch Museum in Oslo; a later version in tempera and oil on board, thought to be completed in 1910, is also in the collection of the Munch Museum.

In 2016 in London, Sotheby's sold a lithograph of Edvard Munch's The Scream - originally owned by Olaf Schou - for £1.8 million / $2.7 million (estimate £800,000-1,200,000), a price which established a record for an impression (print) of Munch's The Scream at auction.

Sotheby's sale of Prints & Multiples in London on 27 September 2016 features a further work by Munch: Attraction I, lithograph, 1896, estimate £35,000-45,000.

From 28 September - 15 October 2016, Paul Stolper Gallery will present 'Texture', a portfolio of ten prints by Her Majesty Queen Sonja of Norway and Magne Furuholmen, made in support of The Queen Sonja Print Award. The portfolio consists of four individual prints by each artist in an edition of sixty, of which numbers one to twenty are available as a portfolio and the rest individually. There are also two prints in an edition of twenty, made exclusively for the portfolio, signed by both Her Majesty Queen Sonja of Norway and Magne Furuholmen. The prints are a combination of etching and photo-polymer, size 50 x 50 cm on 310g Somerset White Satin, printed at Ateljé Larsen in Helsingborg, Sweden, 2015. 'Texture' is an artistic collaboration, both thematically and literally of Her Majesty Queen Sonja and Magne Furuholmen. For more information, please click here.

The Queen Sonja Print Award was founded by HM Queen Sonja of Norway and renowned Norwegian artists Kjell Nupen and Ønulf Opdahl, together with master printer Ole Larsen in 2011. It is the largest international print award, bestowed biannually, and given to an emerging artist working within printmaking. The recipient of the first International Print Award, 2016, is Tauba Auerbach.

On 26 September 2016, Sotheby's London will host a Charity Auction and Reception in support of the Queen Sonja Print Award. The auction will include collaborative prints by HM Queen Sonja and Norwegian artist Magne Furuholmen. HM Queen Sonja and Magne Furuholmen have since 2014 collaborated on a joint art-project in support of Her Majesty's foundation, QSPA. The charity auction includes work by HM Queen Sonja / Magne Furuholmen, HM Queen Sonja, Tauba Auerbach, Peter Blake, Carroll Dunham, and Pablo Picasso.

FOR MORE NEWS FROM SOTHEBY'S

News & Video: http://www.sothebys.com/en/news-video.html Twitter: www.twitter.com/sothebys

Instagram: www.instagram.com/sothebys Facebook: www.facebook.com/sothebys

Weibo: www.weibo.com/sothebyshongkong WeChat: WeChat (ID: sothebyshongkong)

Sotheby's has been uniting collectors with world-class works of art since 1744. Sotheby's became the first international auction house when it expanded from London to New York (1955), the first to conduct sales in Hong Kong (1973), India (1992) and France (2001), and the first international fine art auction house in China (2012). Today, Sotheby's presents auctions in nine different salesrooms, including New York, London, Hong Kong and Paris, and Sotheby's BidNow program allows visitors to view all auctions live online and place bids from anywhere in the world. Sotheby's offers collectors the resources of Sotheby' s Financial Services , the world's only full-service art financing company, as well as private sale opportunities in more than 70 categories, including S|2, the gallery arm of Sotheby's Contemporary Art department, and two retail businesses, Sotheby' s Diamonds and Sotheby' s Wine. Sotheby's has a global network of 90 offices in 40 countries and is the oldest company listed on the New York Stock Exchange (BID).

Images are available upon request

All catalogues are available online at www.sothebys.com or through Sotheby's Catalogue iPad App.