The friendship between Edvard Munch and Stanisław Przybyszewski

Norway’s most famous painter, creator of the iconic ‘The Scream’, Edvard Munch (1863–1944), and the ‘brilliant Pole’, the ‘rising star of Young Poland’ – Stanisław Przybyszewski (1868–1927) – met in the 1890s in Berlin, where artistic life was centred at the time. The artistic bohemian crowd would gather at a wine bar known to regulars as ‘The Black Piglet’ (‘Zum Schwarzen Ferkel’), where debates and discussions about art and life would last until the early hours of the morning. The circle of Scandinavian writers, thinkers and artists, including the playwright August Strindberg (1849–1912), the painter Edvard Munch and the poet Ola Hansson (1860–1925), was joined by a charismatic Pole – Stanisław Przybyszewski. The bond of ideas and souls that formed between them, even though their relationship was not only inspiring but also destructive at the same time, bore the finest fruit.

Przybyszewski wrote in his memoirs:
‘At the same time, I was on very close terms with the Norwegian painter, Edvard Munch […]. Rarely have I shared such a close spiritual kinship with any artist as I did with Edward Munch – and vice versa – a fact he himself constantly emphasised.”

In the painter’s museum – the Munchmuseet in Oslo – we find much visual evidence of this close friendship. The artist produced several versions of Przybyszewski’s portrait, and the motif of his face recurred in many subsequent works by the Norwegian master.

A brief history of Przybyszewski’s life

Stanisław Przybyszewski was born on 7 May 1868 in the village of Łojewo (now in the municipality of Inowrocław). He was the author of plays, novels, poetry and writings on art. His writings exerted a significant influence on Polish and German modernism. He became famous as the author of the first study on the art of Edvard Munch (1894). The Pole found in Munch’s paintings the fullest reflection of his own ideas, which he termed ‘psychological naturalism’. This interpretation contributed to the painter’s success and set the direction for the subsequent reception of his work.

At the age of twenty-one, Przybyszewski arrived in Berlin and, in 1889, began studying medicine, then architecture, but ultimately turned to literature. He joined the Scandinavian colony at the bohemian mecca ‘Pod Czarnym Prosiakiem’. In 1892, Munch exhibited his paintings in Berlin. Amidst a scandal, the exhibition was closed after just a week, and the painter wrote to his aunt: ‘I could not have asked for better publicity’.

At the same time, Edvard Munch introduced his companions to Dagny Juel (1867–1901), a Norwegian woman who had come to Berlin to study music. A beautiful young woman with a captivating personality, she quickly became the queen of the bohemian scene and the ‘muse from the land of the fjords’, adored by artists. No one remained indifferent to her charm. She had affairs with Strindberg and Munch, but it was Stanisław Przybyszewski who, after a few months of knowing her, became her husband. The Przybyszewskis and Munch formed a kind of emotional triangle, based on a kinship of artistic ideas and the two men’s fascination with the same woman. Munch wrote: “I painted several portraits of these people, including one which I called ‘Jealousy’ […]. This boudoir affair ruined many of my plans.”

Thanks to Przybyszewski’s involvement, the first exhibition of Munch’s works in Poland took place in 1903 at Aleksander Krywult’s (1845–1903) Salon in Warsaw.

Stanisław Przybyszewski in Munch’s paintings

The face of Stach, as Przybyszewski was known, reappeared many times in Munch’s works. We can recognise it, for example, in several versions of the painting ‘Jealousy’ – ‘In a Man’s Brain’, ‘A Man’s Head in a Woman’s Hair’. Dagny’s face, which obsessively captivated the painter’s imagination, can be seen in the famous ‘Madonna’, repeated many times in subsequent versions, or in ‘Lovers in the Waves’.

The eponymous portrait of Przybyszewski was painted in 1895, after Stanisław and Dagny had married. It depicts the twenty-seven-year-old Stach posing casually for the artist. The result is a very private, spontaneous image – a quick sketch of a pensive friend. Przybyszewski is leaning slightly forwards, with a cigarette dangling from the left corner of his mouth and a distant gaze directed straight ahead. The bust was sketched hastily on unprimed cardboard. The model’s face is the most finely rendered part. Munch repeats this same portrait composition in two lithographic versions: one in black and white and one in colour.

At the same time as the portrait of the writer, Munch created his self-portrait, also featuring a cigarette.

Munch’s acquaintance with Przybyszewski and the painter’s work

Edvard Munch was in the habit of thoroughly ‘digesting’ a subject that preoccupied him. He therefore produced several versions of a given work, to which he would return even years later. His relationship with Przybyszewski from the days of *Czarny Prosiak*, the kinship of souls of which Przybyszewski wrote, and his support as the artist’s first admirer and champion of his talent left an indelible mark on the painter’s work. The years of his Berlin ‘symbiosis’ were the period in which Munch created his most iconic works, such as *The Scream*, *Madonna*, *The Vampire* and *The Kiss*. It was during this period that Przybyszewski published his most famous works: ‘Requiem aeternam’ (German: ‘Totenmesse’, 1893), ‘De profundis’ (1895), ‘Children of Satan’ (German: ‘Satans Kinder’, 1897).

Przybyszewski – writer, pianist, scandal-maker

In the years that followed, Stach travelled between Norway, Poland and Germany; as editor of the Kraków-based *Życie* (1899), he virtually played the role of a prophet. In his ‘Confiteor’ manifesto, he put forward the idea of a free, elitist art, devoid of any didactic or patriotic purpose – ‘art for art’s sake’ – with the artist as its priest. He was also a talented and original pianist, as well as… a scandal-monger and womaniser, the father of six children by three different women. To marry another woman, he abandoned the mother of three of them. The abandoned woman soon took her own life. During his marriage, he became involved in two affairs simultaneously, including one with Jadwiga Kasprowiczowa, the wife of his friend Jan Kasprowicz.

Stanisław Przybyszewski returned to Poland in 1919 and actively supported the country’s reconstruction. He worked in the Civil Office of the President of Poland and was awarded the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta (1925). He died on 23 November 1927, aged 59, at the Jaronty estate near Inowrocław. A funeral with full honours, attended by numerous dignitaries, journalists, writers and university rectors, took place in Góra na Kujawach.

Dagny Juel-Przybyszewska died tragically on 5 June 1901, aged 34, in Tiflis (now Tbilisi) in Georgia. She was shot dead by Władysław Emeryk, a poet fascinated by Stach’s writings and Dagny’s personality, who subsequently took his own life. Today she is regarded as a symbol of feminism, and her family home in Kongsvinger houses the Women’s Museum.

Edvard Munch lived to the age of 81. He died on 23 January 1944 in Aker, on the outskirts of Oslo. He remained artistically active until the end of his life. He produced thousands of works in painting, printmaking, sculpture, drawing, photography and film. In his will, he bequeathed his entire estate to the city of Oslo, where the Munch Museum opened in 1963.