Edvard Munch was a Norwegian painter. His 1893 work The Scream has become one of the most iconic and acclaimed images in all of Western art.
Paintings by Edvard Munch
Love and Pain (Munch) (1893)
Love and Pain is an 1895 painting by Edvard Munch; it has also been called Vampire, though not by Munch. The painting depicts a man and woman embracing, with the woman kissing the man on his neck. Munch painted six different versions of the same subject between 1893 and 1895. Three versions are in the collection of the Munch Museum in Oslo, one is held by the Gothenburg Museum of Art, one is owned by a private collector, and the final work is unaccounted for. Munch painted several additional versions and derivatives of the work later in his career.
The painting shows a woman with long flame-red hair kissing a man on the neck, as the couple embrace. Although others have seen in it "a man locked in a vampire's tortured embrace – her molten-red hair running along his soft bare skin", Munch himself always claimed it showed nothing more than "just a woman kissing a man on the neck".
The Sick Child (Munch) (1885)
The Sick Child (Norwegian: Det syke barn) is the title given to a group of six paintings and a number of lithographs, drypoints and etchings completed by the Norwegian artist Edvard Munch between 1885 and 1926. Each work records the moments before the death of his older sister, Johanne Sophie (1862–1877), from tuberculosis aged 15. Munch repeatedly returned to this deeply traumatic event in his art over a period of over 40 years. In the works, Sophie is typically shown on her deathbed, accompanied by a dark-haired, grieving woman assumed to be her aunt Karen; the studies often show her in a cropped headshot. In all the painted versions, Sophie is sitting in a chair, obviously suffering from pain, propped by a large white pillow, looking towards an ominous curtain likely intended as a symbol of death. She is shown with a haunted expression, clutching hands with a grief-stricken older woman who seems to want to comfort her but whose head is bowed as if she cannot bear to look the younger girl in the eye.
Throughout his career, Munch often returned to and created several variants of his paintings. The Sick Child became for Munch—who nearly died from tuberculosis himself as a child—a means to record both his feelings of despair and guilt that he had been the one to survive and to confront his feelings of loss for his late sister. He became obsessed with the image, and he created numerous versions in a variety of formats over the following decades. The six painted works were completed over a period of more than 40 years, using a number of different models.
Melancholy (Munch) (1891)
Melancholy (Norwegian: Melankoli; also known as Jappe on the Beach, Jealousy or Evening) is a motif by the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch, which he executed in five paintings between 1891 and 1896 and two woodcuts between 1896 and 1902. It shows a man sitting on the beach with his head propped up in the foreground, while in the background a couple is on their way to a boat trip. The colors support the melancholic mood of the scene. In this motif, Munch processed the unhappy love affair of his friend Jappe Nilssen with the married Oda Krohg, which mirrored his own past relationship with a married woman. The melancholic figure in the foreground is therefore associated with both Munch's friend and the painter himself. Melancholy is considered one of the Norwegian painter's first symbolist paintings and is part of his Frieze of Life.
A male figure sits slumped on a rocky beach at the front edge of the picture plane. He has his head thoughtfully resting in his hand, a classic pose of melancholy. The 1892 version differs from the other paintings in that the figure is pushed completely into the lower right corner. The turned head and the direction of the hand reinforce a movement out of the picture. This corner position repeatedly draws the viewer's attention back to the landscape, which thus becomes an equally important part of the picture. In the upper part of the picture, a jetty can be seen with three figures on it: a couple and a man with oars. They are on their way to a yellow boat at the end of the jetty. The curved shoreline that continues behind the jetty creates an illusion of depth. It corresponds with the tree and cloud formations in the background.
Madonna (Munch) (1894)
Madonna is the usual title given to several versions of a composition by the Norwegian expressionist painter Edvard Munch showing a bare-breasted half-length female figure created between 1892 and 1895 using oil paint on canvas. He also produced versions in print form.
The version owned by the Munch Museum of Oslo was stolen in 2004, but recovered two years later in 2006. Two other versions are owned by the National Gallery of Norway and the Kunsthalle Hamburg. Another one is owned by businessman Nelson Blitz, and one was bought in 1999 by Steven A. Cohen.
The Dance of Life (Munch) (2000)
The Dance of Life or Life's Dance is an 1899–1900 expressionist painting by Edvard Munch, now in the National Museum of Norway, in Oslo. Olaf Schou purchased the painting in Oslo in 1910, immediately presenting it to the National Gallery.
The painting was an important work in Munch's project The Frieze of Life, which played with themes of love, sexual anxiety, and death. In creating the painting, Munch was allegedly inspired by the 1898 Helge Rode play Dansen gaar, of which Munch kept a copy in his personal library. This painting possibly reflects Munch's feelings towards the women in his life. He had a history of love affairs ending in heartbreak.
The Kiss (Munch) (1897)
The Kiss is an oil painting on canvas completed by the Norwegian symbolist artist Edvard Munch in 1897. Part of his Frieze of Life, which depicts the stages of a relationship between men and women, The Kiss is a realization of a motif with which he had experimented since 1888/89: a couple kissing, their faces fusing as one in a symbolic representation of their unity. Exhibited as early as 1903, this work is held at the Munch Museum in Oslo.
The Kiss is an oil painting on canvas, measuring 81 by 99 centimetres (32 in × 39 in). It depicts a couple surrounded by darkness, with only a sliver of daylight showing through a window which is mostly covered by a curtain. They hold an embrace as they seemingly merge into one, their faces a single, featureless shape. Art critic Roberta Smith notes that Munch favored "long, somewhat slurpy brush strokes that were more stained than painted". The painting is similar to, though simpler than, another work with the same theme Munch produced in the same period.
Puberty (Munch) (1895)
Puberty (Norwegian: Pubertet) is an 1894–95 painting created by Norwegian artist Edvard Munch. Puberty has associations with both symbolism and expressionism, the former a movement from which Munch emerged, and the latter a movement in which Munch was pivotal. It is part of an informal series or cycle of paintings, prints, and images known as The Frieze of Life, that Munch created in the 1890s, although he often revisited and explored themes and images from the series throughout his career. The painting was also done as a lithograph and an etching by Munch.
Whenever he was questioned on the subject, Munch maintained he had not been influenced by the work of the Belgium artist and illustrator Félicien Rops, specifically the etching Le Plus Bel Amour De Don Juan [Don Juan's Greatest Love], which was published as an illustration in the second edition of Jules Amédée Barbey d’Aurevilly's book Les Diaboliques in 1882 (based on an earlier 1879 pencil drawing).) However, art critics and historians have consistently noted the similarities; beginning with Przybyszewski (1894) the first publication devoted to Munch.
Jealousy (Munch) (1895)
Jealousy (Norwegian: Sjalusi is an oil on canvas painting by Norwegian artist Edvard Munch. Munch returned to this image throughout his whole life - he completed no less than 11 painted versions of Jealousy. The first painting was executed in 1895, and the last was made during the 1930s. Munch also created four lithograph versions and one drypoint of Jealousy.
The painting was made during European period and is based on expressionism style. The 1895 oil on canvas painting, perhaps the most famous version, is now housed at Rasmus Meyer Collection, Bergen and it measures 67 cm (26 in) by 100 cm (39 in). In addition, eight painted versions are possessed by the Munch Museum in Oslo and one version is located at the Städel Museum in Frankfurt am Main (on loan from a private collection). Another version, executed between 1898 and 1900, titled Jealousy in the Bath was sold at Sotheby's in 1982 and is now a private collection in London.
Anxiety (Munch) (1894)
Anxiety (Norwegian: Angst) is an 1894 painting by the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch. It shows a group of people walking towards the viewer under a blood-red sky. The painting is a synthesis of the earlier motifs Evening on Karl Johan (1892) and The Scream (1893). It is part of Munch's Frieze of Life and is exhibited at the Munch Museum. In 1896, Munch created a lithograph and a woodcut based on the motif.
The image borrows the setting from The Scream: a railing cutting diagonally across the picture space with lines falling from the top left to the bottom right, a steep precipice revealing a city and a fjord navigated by ships in the distance, and finally a blood-red sky with stormy cloud formations. On the footbridge or bridge is a group of people with greenish-pale faces and wide-open eyes, staring directly at the viewer and seeming to press toward them. Three figures are particularly prominent in the foreground: a woman wearing a bonnet or halo-like hat, a man wearing a top hat, and another man wearing a hat and a goatee.
Inger on the Beach (1889)
Inger on the Beach (also Summer Night; Norwegian: Inger på stranden, Sommernatt) is a painting by the Norwegian artist Edvard Munch. It was created in the summer of 1889, at Åsgårdstrand and is a portrait of Munch's youngest sister Inger.
A young woman, identified by the title as Munch's youngest sister Inger, sits in a quiet pose, a straw hat in her hands, on a large granite rock and holds her head in profile. Her bright white dress contrasts with the green mossy stones and the blues and purples of the sea water behind her, which, as the alternative titles indicate, suggests Nordic summer nights. Only a few pots and a fishing boat behind her betray human life in the countryside. Munch used a similar pose for his 1884 interior composition Morning, featuring a girl on the edge of a bed.
Starry Night (Munch) (1893)
Starry Night (Norwegian: Stjernenatt) is an oil-on-canvas painting by the Norwegian artist Edvard Munch, from 1893. This night landscape represents the coastline at Åsgårdstrand, a small beach resort south of Oslo in Norway, where Edvard Munch had spent his summers since the late 1880s. In this painting Munch shows the view from the hotel window where he fell in love for the first time.
Evening on Karl Johan (1892)
Evening on Karl Johan (Norwegian: Aften på Karl Johan) is a painting by the Norwegian artist Edvard Munch from 1892. It shows a crowd of people walking towards the viewer on Karl Johans Gate in Kristiania, present-day Oslo, and is one of the earliest works of Munch's Frieze of Life.
The image shows Karl Johans Gate, Kristiania's main boulevard, at night. On the right in the background are the Storting Building and two towering poplar trees; on the left is a row of houses with illuminated windows. On this side of the street, a tightly packed crowd approaches the viewer. The men mostly wear top hats, the women light straw hats with ribbons. Their faces are expressionless, frozen into grimaces, their eyes wide open. The bright yellow and green of their faces contrasts with the blue-red sky. On the right side of the street, a single black shadow walks in the opposite direction.