Jacob Torkildsen

Jacob Torkildsen of 1887, at the Munch Museum, is a male portrait from the same early period when 1887 represented an unusually concentrated year of portrait production for the young Munch. Jacob Torkildsen was a Norwegian sailing master, and Munch's portrait of a working man of the sea belongs to the Norwegian Naturalists' interest in depicting the full range of social classes rather than restricting portraiture to middle-class and above. The working-class portrait was itself a political statement in the context of late nineteenth-century Norwegian cultural life, which was in the midst of the national romanticism and social realist debates that would eventually contribute to Norwegian independence from Sweden in 1905.

The portrait of Torkildsen shows Munch responding to the weathered characterful face of an older working man with more textural energy in the paint surface than he typically brings to younger sitters. The handling of the background is economical, and the figure's dress is rendered with enough detail to identify his social position without extensive description.