Tête-à-tête

Tête-à-tête of 1885, now in the Munch Museum in Oslo, shows two figures — a man and a woman — in close conversation, a subject that in Munch's emerging psychological language would quickly become charged with themes of domination, desire, and melancholy. Painted when he was twenty-one, the work shows his Naturalist training at the Royal School of Art and Design in Kristiania, before the symbolic and Expressionist tendencies of his mature work had yet asserted themselves. The domestic interior, the figures' proximity, and the controlled tonal palette recall the Norwegian Naturalism of Christian Krohg, his principal early influence and teacher.

The paint handling is academic and controlled by the standards of Munch's later work, with carefully blended tonal transitions and a structured interior space. The light falls from the side, modelling the faces with the conventional chiaroscuro of Naturalist indoor portraiture, without yet the distortion and expressive exaggeration of his post-1889 mature style.