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.