Edvard Munch – Hans Jæger

Hans Jæger

Hans Jæger by Edvard Munch is an oil painting on canvas from 1889, held under inventory number NG.M.00485 by the Nasjonalmuseet in Oslo. The original measures 84 x 109 cm. The scene is upright and shows a man sitting slumped in a broad armchair, a hat on his head and a glass on the small table at the right.

The figure takes up almost the whole width of the canvas. He sits low and at an angle, the body turned slightly to the left, while the eyes look straight out at the viewer. On his head is a soft grey-brown hat with a wide brim, pulled down at the front so that the eyes stay in shadow.

The face is the most worked passage. The beard and moustache are reddish brown, the cheeks warm and crossed with red and blue strokes, the eyes deep set and dark. The expression is neither friendly nor hostile; it is withheld, a little weary, the look of a man whom being painted neither troubles nor interests.

He wears a loose light blue-grey coat buttoned high at the throat, falling across the body in wide soft folds. His right arm rests on the chair arm and the hand hangs over the edge, painted pale, with blue shadows and no detail. The lower body is dark, almost black-blue, the legs apart.

The armchair is large and upholstered. At the lower left a brown-red carved wooden arm shows, and behind the figure rises a dark grey-blue padded back. At the right stands a small table with a pink-violet cloth, and on it a tall stemmed glass, half filled with a pale liquid that catches a reflection.

At the upper left the wall is light, in cream, white and greenish yellow, and painted very sparely; there the weave of the canvas shows through the colour. At the upper right the wall darkens to olive brown. At the lower left the painter’s signature and the year are written in dark paint.

The paint is broad and wet. The strokes stay visible and do not blend, and in places the colour is laid so thinly that the ground takes part in the tone. Nothing is smoothed: the scene is built from planes and strokes rather than transitions, which is unusually bold for so early a work.

The sitter was a writer and the leading figure of the Kristiania bohemian circle to which the young Munch also belonged. The portrait is therefore not the commission of a respectable citizen but the image of a friend and mentor, painted without flattery: the hat stays on, the glass stands on the table, the body is slumped.

The structure rests on two oppositions. The figure is heavy, dark and low while the space behind is light and empty; the glass at the right is the only small exact shape in an otherwise broadly painted scene, and it draws the eye precisely because it is so slight. The diagonal of the table leads the eye back to the hand and from there to the face.

Our version is hand-painted in oils on canvas, stroke by stroke, and is never printed. Because every canvas is made individually to order, no two match down to the last detail; small differences in the paint are the mark of a human hand and not a fault. In this fine art reproduction the hardest passage is the face beneath the brim, built from shadow and a few warm strokes; lightened too far, the portrait loses its weight.

The format is upright and medium in size and the colours are quiet and cool, so this piece of wall art carries a smaller room well. It works in a study, a library or a dining room, since the subject is not insistent. The ground should be light and calm; against a dark wall the dark passages merge into it. Hang it at eye level in even, neutral light.

Ten sizes are offered from 40 x 50 cm to 180 x 230 cm, along with a custom size; every canvas can be ordered framed or unframed. More of the painter’s work is in the Edvard Munch gallery, and we write about his life and work on the Edvard Munch blog.