Inger on the Beach 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.
In the summer of 1889, Munch rented a small house in Åsgårdstrand, a small Norwegian coastal town on the Oslofjord, which served as a summer resort of many citizens and artists from nearby Kristiana, now Oslo. Among them were Munch's friends Christian Krohg and Frits Thaulow. History →
A few months after its completion, the painting (originally titled Evening) was displayed for the first time at the annual autumn exhibition in Kristiana, while Munch had already traveled to Paris to collect impressions of the local art scene through which his symbolism would find expressive style. The contemporary criticism was extremely hostile. Reception →
Ulrich Bischoff suggests that—unlike Munch's earlier 1884 portrait of the then 14-year-old Inger in her black confirmation dress, a youthful work in the tradition of portraiture of the 19th century—Inger on the beach shows the future importance of the artist. Interpretation →
Evening on Karl Johan
189284 × 122 cmKODE Art museums and composer homes
Evening on 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 first notes hinting at the motif of Evening on Karl Johan can be found in Munch's literary diary from 1889. History →
According to Franziska Müller, the perspective in the work evokes a feeling of menace. The viewer faces the crowds in the painting so directly that it is as if they were looking into an abyss or their own reflection. Interpretation →
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. Description →
Vampire
189377 × 98 cmMunch Museum
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.
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". Description →
A version of the painting was stolen from the Munch Museum on 23 February 1988. It was recovered later the same year, when the thief contacted the police. Versions →
Starry Night
1893J. Paul Getty Museum
Starry Night 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.
Anxiety
189494 × 74 cmMunch Museum
Anxiety 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).
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. Description →
In 1896, two prints based on the motif Anxiety were created, presumably within a few months of each other: a lithograph, which is mirrored opposite the painting, and a woodcut. In both, the railing that dominated the perspective of the painting has been omitted, and the figures are spread across the entire foreground. Prints →
Arne Eggum describes Anxiety as a synthesis of two earlier depictions of feelings of anxiety, namely the paintings Evening on Karl Johan (1892) and Despair (1892) and its further development The Scream (1893). Position in Munch's oeuvre →
Puberty
1895152 × 110 cmNational Museum of Art, Architecture and Design
Puberty 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.
In the late 1880s and into the mid-1890s, Munch, in his mid-twenties, had begun to create his series of Puberty pieces. At this time Munch had already established himself as a notable artist in Berlin. Sexual depression →
Munch's painting Puberty depicts a young naked girl sitting on the edge of a bed. Her legs are pressed together. Subject and title →
Jealousy
189567 × 100 cmArt Museums of Bergen
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.
The Kiss
189799 × 81 cmMunch Museum
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 was exhibited in 1903 at Munch's show Love's Awakening, paired with a copy of his Madonna. The painting is now part of the collection of the Munch Museum in Oslo. Provenance →
According to the Museum of Modern Art, the dark ambiance of The Kiss is representative of Munch's ambivalence regarding romance. In the 1897 painting, art historian Reinhold Heller finds it "virtually impossible" to separate the two figures, particularly where their faces meet and become one. Analysis →
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. Description →
Self-Portrait. Between the Clock and the Bed
1940150 × 120 cmMunch Museum
Self-Portrait. Between the Clock and the Bed. is an oil on canvas self-portrait painting by Norwegian artist Edvard Munch, from 1940 to 1943. It is one of his last major works.
Dance of Life
2000125 × 191 cmNational Museum of Art, Architecture and Design
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. History and description →
