 Edvard Munch, Akerselva, 1881 Oil on Panel, 23 x 31.5 cm

“By the early 1900s Munch had become a recognised artist, especially in Germany, where he had spent much of his time in the 1890s. He also lived there for most of the period from 1902 to 1908.⁣

For Munch personally, these were difficult years, marked by alcoholism, angst and unease. In the years 1904-1907 he painted a number of self-portraits with loneliness as a theme.⁣

Self-Portrait with a Bottle of Wine was painted in Weimar in 1906. The artist sits at the table, alone with a bottle of wine, a glass and a plate. The hunched figure and the weak folded hands are an expression of utter helplessness.⁣

The figure is placed well into the foreground. The sloping lines create a strong depth perspective in the picture. The head is in the centre, where all the lines meet.⁣

The perspective created by the lines is countered by the use of colours, which creates a tense and claustrophobic atmosphere in the picture. The strong red colour behind the artist’s head creates a movement forward and draws our attention to the head.⁣

Two figures resembling waiters are standing back-to-back in the background. They are pictured as have a shared body, and almost seem top have grown out of Munch’s own body. The two heads, each looking in different directions can be interpreted as metaphors for opposing forces in the artist’s soul. This split into two states of mind can be found in some other Munch pictures.”⁣

 Edvard Munch⁣ Self-Portrait with a Bottle of Wine⁣ 1906⁣

“Painted in 1895, when Munch was 32 years old, Self-Portrait with Cigarette is loaded with subtle contradictions. Lacking an identifiable environment and depicting the artist viewed frontally and slightly from below, the self-portrait represents Munch as a man directly engaging his viewer yet distanced from the world. Lit theatrically from below, his face and his right hand stand out in sharp relief against blue background in a manner that is, as one of his critics noted, related to Rembrandt. ⁣

The artist's face and hands are conspicuously emphasised and seem almost luminous against the dark, unarticulated background. For an artist, these parts of the body are especially significant. At the centre of the composition, one hand is raised to chest height, as if held to the heart. Although the artist seems to be gazing intensely at the viewer, he is looking no less into himself and his world. The artist is illuminated from below and together with the diffuse background and the smoke from the cigarette, this lends the picture a hint of mystery.”⁣

 Edvard Munch⁣ Self-Portrait with Cigarette⁣ 1895⁣ “Painted

“This is one of the first lithographs that Munch (1863-1944) made in Berlin in 1895. The basic design is drawn in lithographic chalk, over which a thick ink wash has been brushed to create a solid black. In this it gives an immediate impression of a woodcut more than a lithograph.The bones at the bottom of the picture are a 'memento mori', or a reminder of death, and appear as if they were his own arm leaning on the picture's frame. The whole composition takes the form of a sepulchral tablet.'I was born dying', Munch claimed as an old man. 'Sickness, insanity and death were the dark angels standing guard at my cradle and they have followed me throughout my life'. Some years later, probably after 1900, when reprinting this lithograph, Munch blacked out the arm and his name.”⁣

 Edvard Munch⁣ Self-portrait with skeleton arm⁣ 1895 “This

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“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. All record a moment before the death of his older sister Johanne Sophie (1862–1877) from tuberculosis at 15. Munch returned to this deeply traumatic event repeatedly in his art, over six completed oil paintings and many studies in various media, over a period of more than 40 years.

1. 1885–1886, Nasjonalgalleriet, Oslo. Impressionistic and dominated by strong vertical brush strokes, composed mostly from whites, greys and greens. Small areas were later over-painted.⁣

2. 1896, Konstmuseet, Gothenburg. Completed while Munch was living in Paris. Mostly greens and a richer palette, though thinner brush strokes.⁣

3. 1907, Thielska Galleriet, Stockholm. A commission from the Swedish financier and art collector Ernest Thiel. Thiel also commissioned from the much in demand Munch, a portrait of the banker's idol Friedrich Nietzsche, whose work he later translated into Swedish.⁣

4. 1907 Tate, London. Evidence that this work was also commissioned by Thiel. For a time this painting was believed to have been executed in 1916. The work had been in the Gemäldegalerie, Dresden until 1928.⁣

5. 1925 or earlier. Munch Museum, Oslo. The painting's dating is uncertain; some art historians have proposed a completion date as early as 1916. The later date of 1925 is based on the year of its first surviving record; photograph taken in Munch's studio.⁣

6. 1927 or earlier. Munch Museum, Oslo.”⁣

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“The workers' stolid forms contrast to the ghostlike creatures swarming along Karl Johan Street in Evening on Karl Johan Street. After lambasting the bourgeoisie, Munch's new-found public outlook led him to depict the working-class world, although he was not a romantic or political idealist. ⁣

The Roadmenders by Edouard Manet is the source for this painting, but Munch is more determined to portray specific workmen. They form a wedge, their shovels and legs creating an architectonic framework. Their exertion is apparent in their faces; the man on the right seems to rest on his shovel, while the smaller figures behind are working in the snow. A rough dignity and self-esteem radiates from the group, caught as though posing for a photograph, placing the work in the tradition of Millet (though without his sentiment) and van Gogh (but without his intensity).”⁣

 Edvard Munch ⁣ Workers in Snow⁣ 1912⁣ “The workers' stolid

“The background landscape, inside Kristiania Fjord, is the same that we find in The Scream. The pale, ghostly faces come toward us like a procession of ghosts, in a line which could almost be seen as a funeral cortège.”⁣

 Edvard Munch⁣ Anxiety ⁣ 1894⁣ “The background landscape

1893 “The setting of The Storm is the Norwegian seaside village of Åsgårdstrand, where Munch often spent his summers. The main figure and the group behind her cover their ears to keep out the sound of the storm’s howling winds. This painting was made the same year Munch originated the motif of The Scream. Here the depiction is more naturalistic, and the characters are female rather than male, but the compositions both reflect Munch’s preoccupation with the concept of a solitary individual set apart from a community of others”

 Edvard Munch The Storm 1893 “The setting of The Storm is

“In the years 1889-91, Munch lived in France, supported by an artist’s bursary from the Norwegian state. When cholera broke out in Paris in December 1889, Munch moved to Saint-Cloud, outside the city. There he rented the floor above a café, which commanded a beautiful view of the Seine. In the atmospheric and melancholy Night in Saint- Cloud, we see both the inside of his dark room and the view through the window late at night. At the window sits a man lost in thought. It might be a friend, the Danish poet Emanuel Goldstein. Shortly afterwards, Munch would design the vignette for Goldstein’s anthology of symbolist poems Alruner (1891), an illustration that served as predecessor to Melancholy (1892), now in the National Museum’s collection.”⁣

 Edvard Munch⁣ Night in Saint-Cloud⁣ 1890⁣ “In the years

1899⁣⁣⁣ ⁣⁣⁣ “Life is not in fact a dance and metaphor is too vague to give much indication of what is intended. The picture, however, appears to be a more complex and personalized version of Woman in Three Stages, with an innocent woman in white on the left, a sensual woman dancing with the man, and an anguished woman in black on the right.⁣⁣

It is possible to construct an explanation of the scene if we remember that at times Munch used the depth of the picture space as a time scale, moving from the distant past in the far background up to the present in the foreground adjacent to the picture plane. Far away on the beach stands a solitary girl, waiting for a partner. At about the same distance but now on the greensward a group of men appear to contend for the girl's favor - a point where jealousy arise.⁣⁣⁣

Nearer to us a chosen male partner dances decorously with the girl; this is the stage of courtship. Still closer to the foreground courtship has progressed to lust, in the form of a leering man ready to ravish his partner. His face is a gross caricature of the playwright Gunnar Heiberg, who had introduced Munch to Tulla Larsen and of whom he was jealous, believing Tulla had previously had an affair with him. The girl still wears white but her hair has darkened and reddened. The couple in the foreground represent the final stage, where the dance of life turns into a dance of death. They glide through the motion like somnambulists, trapped by their fate. Munch's feet are enveloped by the coils of Tulla's red gown, while its predatory contour almost completely encases him. Yet there is no eye contact, they remain spiritually remote from each other. Placed in profile, unlike nearly all the other figures, they form the timeless image of a pair for whom creative life, his artistic, hers biological, has ended. Tulla on the left looks forward naively to bliss, for her gaze misses the distressing vision, but she on the right looks straight at it, apprehending the fatal consequences of love.”⁣⁣⁣

 Edvard Munch⁣⁣⁣ The Dance of Life⁣⁣⁣ 1899⁣⁣⁣ ⁣⁣⁣ “Life is

“Edvard Munch’s life and art — particularly his iconic work The Scream (1893; National Museum, Oslo) — have come to epitomize modern notions of anxiety. Yet the same year he painted his radical image, Munch was experimenting with other styles and themes. Frequent visits to Paris and Berlin between 1889 and 1893 brought the Norwegian artist into direct contact with the Impressionists and Symbolists. These travels encouraged him to adopt their bold brushwork, daring compositions, and imagery. But he nonetheless continued to incorporate the Romantic subjects of the northern European artists long familiar to him, such as a lone figure at an open window. This combination is powerfully manifested in The Girl by the Window, made soon after his return home to Norway.⁣

In the dead of night, a young girl in her nightgown stands in a darkened room gazing out at the city. The steep angle of the floor and the deep shadows that obliterate everything in the room, save a suggestion of a piece of furniture at the lower right, create an unsettling and enigmatic scene. Loosely applied, somber brown tones mingle with violets and blues, evoking a feeling of melancholy and anticipation. The window functions as a symbolic barrier, separating the interior from the outside world. The sense of mystery is deepened and complicated by the fact that we cannot see the expression on the girl’s face, nor do we know what she covertly observes. She in turn appears unaware that, as she gazes from behind the curtain at something unknown outside, the artist and implied viewer are watching her.”⁣

 Edvard Munch⁣ The Girl by the Window ⁣ 1893⁣ “Edvard

“A recognized forerunner of Expressionism, Norwegian painter and printmaker Edvard Munch is renowned for his representations of emotion. Associated with the international development of Symbolism, Munch experimented with many different themes, palettes, and styles of drawing. Though stylistically influenced by Paul Gauguin and the Nabis, Munch’s subjects are drawn from his Scandinavian roots and his own tortured psyche.”⁣

 Edvard Munch⁣ Despair⁣ 1894⁣ “A recognized forerunner of

“After 1902 Munch’s lithographs were mainly drawn on paper.⁣

There were, however, some exceptions, such as this portrait of Eva Mudocci from 1903, executed directly on stone using a variety of lithographic techniques - with lithographic crayon, tusche, and scraping tools. ⁣

Eva Mudocci was a famous British violinist who, together with the pianist Bella Edwards, had concert tours throughout Europe, including Norway.⁣

Edward Munch met her in Paris in 1903. The two of them became close friends. Initially the relationship was of an erotic nature, but in time became more like a brother-and-sister relationship. From 1902 to 1908 she was one of Munch’s closest confidantes.⁣

Munch himself called the lithograph Madonna and Madonna with Brooch, connecting it to the Madonna motif from the 1890s, but the Madonna- motif’s clearly sexual contents t have been reduced in this portrait to undertones in a beautiful and soulful face.⁣

Mudocci became an ideal figure and a muse for the artist, and this portrait, with its lyrical atmosphere and musical rhythms is undoubtedly one of the finest of Munch’s many female portraits.⁣

The portrait is nowadays best known as The Brooch. Acting here as an eye-catcher in the composition, the brooch was a gift from the Norwegian art historian Jens Thiis in 1901.”⁣

 Edvard Munch⁣ The Brooch. Eva Mudocci⁣ 1903⁣ “After 1902

“Some of the most emotionally-loaded landscapes from Munch’s Ekely-period are a group of blue-tinted winter night pictures which he painted in a short period between 1922 and 1924.⁣

The motifs, seen from his house at Ekely, convey a sense of calm, harmony and stability which is partly achieved with the help of rounded shapes which are joined together in a firm and purposeful construction. The pictures get their light from the starry sky, the night light above the town and the light from his own room. ⁣

In Starry Night you can see a shadow which is cast on the veranda steps by a strong indoor light. The shadow, probably Munch’s own, contributes to the painting’s evocation of loneliness in the face of death. ⁣

At the same time as Munch was painting the winter landscapes around Ekely he was very interested in Henrik Ibsen’s play John Gabriel Borkman. The shadow of Munch that we see in Starry Night could just as well be interpreted as that of Borkman, the old man on his way out into the winter night in order to die in the play’s tragic final scene.”⁣

 Edvard Munch⁣ Starry Night⁣ 1922/1924⁣ “Some of the most

“1892’s Despair by Norwegian Expressionist painter Edvard Munch (1863-1944) shows an obscured figure turning away from both the social world of the picture space, as shown by the two men walking away in the background, and turning from the spectator.⁣

The overall scene of wavy colours seem to be a contribution to the sense of disorientation and isolation. It is notably set in the same place as the figure in Munch’s masterpiece The Scream which he would paint the following year.⁣

Edvard Munch’s Despair is in the Munch Museum in Oslo, Norway.”⁣

 Edvard Munch⁣ Sick Mood at Sunset. Despair⁣ 1892⁣ “1892’s

“Death in the Sickroom from 1893 goes back to the memory of sister Sophie’s death. She died of tuberculosis in 1877. The motif is one of a number of Munch’s portrayals of sickness, death and sorrow in the family.⁣

In the sparsely furnished room the artist has painted himself together with his closest family - his brother, sisters, father and aunt. His 15-year-old sister is sitting in a chair with the back of the chair facing us.⁣

Munch: Her last request was to get up out of the bed and sit in a chair. “I so much want to live”, she said, “I think we have such good times together”. But in that chair Sophie died…⁣

In the picture, which Munch also called The Moment of Death, all the family members are portrayed at the ages they were when the motif was painted in 1893. It could be that Munch did this in order to express a dimension of contemporaneity – that the family would for ever be marked by the death of Sophie.⁣

The large separated colour surfaces and the simplified forms limited by clear contours show ties with symbolism and synthetism and Paul Gauguin.⁣

Munch painted two versions of Death in the Sickroom. Both paintings are to be found Oslo – the first one shown here is in the Munch Museum and the second is in the National Gallery.”⁣

 Edvard Munch⁣ Death in the Sickroom⁣ 1893⁣/1895 “Death in

“Love and Pain is a painting by Edvard Munch, It has also been called Vampire, though not by Munch. Munch painted six different versions of the subject in the period 1893–1895; three versions are at the Munch Museum in Oslo, one is at the Gothenburg Museum of Art, one is owned by a private collector and the last one is unaccounted for. He also painted several versions and derivatives in his later 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 painting was first called Vampire by Munch's friend, the critic Stanisław Przybyszewski. Przybyszewski saw the painting on exhibition and described it as "a man who has become submissive, and on his neck a biting vampire's face.””⁣⁣

 Edvard Munch⁣ Love and Pain ⁣⁣ 1895⁣⁣ “Love and Pain is a

 Edvard Munch, Garden in Kragerø, 1909 Private collection

Edvard Munch, The Seine at Saint-Cloud 1890

 Edvard Munch, The Seine at Saint-Cloud 1890 Munch Museum

 Edvard Munch. Garden in Lübeck, 1903 Oil on Canvas, 72.3 x

Edvard Munch, Garden with Red House, 1882

 Edvard Munch, Garden with Red House, 1882 #edvard #munch

 Edvard Munch, Young Blond Girl, 1891 #edvard #munch

 Edvard Munch, Evening Talk, 1889 @smkmuseum #edvard #munch

 Edvard Munch, Model in the Garden, 1930 @munchmuseum

Edvard Munch, Two Boys On A Country Lane, 1882

 Edvard Munch, Two Boys On A Country Lane, 1882 #edvard

 Edvard Munch, View From Fossveien, 1880

Edvard Munch: Red Virginia Creeper, 1898 – 1900, Oil on canvas. 119.5 x 121 cm., The Munch Museum, Oslo

By the end of the century some paintings had begun to show signs of a disintegration of Munch's synthetist art nouveau style. This painting here is a good example. Colors have brightened but the pattern is weakened in places by insufficient value contrast and by indiscriminate mingling of positive and negative lines and of flat and modulated areas of color. Nevertheless it is a powerful conception, the very confusion increasing the disturbing effect. The man strives to escape his frightening vision. His head decapitated by the base line suggests death, matching the barren tree with the stump of a severed branch and the strangulation of the house by a bloody parasite. With red eyes and fearful green-ish face he appears to flee along the winding road toward us, away from whatever menace the house holds for him.

It has been suggested that the scene represents jealousy. Some features do resemble the picture of that name: the truncated forward-facing figure darkly clad. Here is an admittedly fanciful explanation, offered with the excuse that Munch's pictures continually invite speculative interpretations. At the time he painted this picture Munch was having his affair with Tulla Larsen but dreaded the entanglement of marriage (jealousy of her other lovers may have been one of the reasons). The plant encircling the house is a Virginia creeper. This is not a wine grape but a member of the same vine family. Tulla's father was a wealthy wine merchant. (edvardmunch.org)

 Edvard Munch: Red Virginia Creeper, 1898 – 1900, Oil on

Edvard Munch: Dance Of Life, 1900, oil on canvas, 126 x 190.5 cm, National Gallery, Oslo

A distinction can be drawn between those of Munch's imaginative works that are directly symbolic, like Jealousy, and those like the present picture that are illustrations of a metaphor. The latter may be more difficult to interpret. Life is not in fact a dance and metaphor is too vague to give much indication of what is intended. The picture, however, appears to be a more complex and personalized version of Woman in Three Stages, with an innocent woman in white on the left, a sensual woman dancing with the man, and an anguished woman in black on the right. All three resemble Tulla Larsen; the girls dancing in the background may also represent her. The man in the foreground appears to be Munch.

The initial impulse for life's dance comes from the sun with its phallic column of light crossing the sea. In front of this, far away on the beach stands a solitary girl, waiting for a 'dance' partner. At about the same distance but now on the greensward a group of men appear to contend for the girl's favor - a point where jealousy arise. Nearer to us a chosen male partner dances decorously with the girl; this is the stage of courtship. Still closer to the foreground courtship has progressed to lust, in the form of a leering man ready to ravish his partner. His face is a gross caricature of the playwright Gunnar Heiberg, who had introduced Munch to Tulla Larsen and of whom he was jealous, believing Tulla had previously had an affair with him. The girl still wears white but her hair has darkened and reddened. The couple in the foreground represent the final stage, where the dance of life turns into a dance of death. They glide through the motion like somnambulists, trapped by their fate.

 Edvard Munch: Dance Of Life, 1900, oil on canvas, 126 x

Edvard Munch, Jealousy, 1895, Oil on canvas, 66.8 cm × 100 cm (26.3 in × 39 in), Bergen Kunstmuseum (Rasmus Meyer's Collection)

This painting brings together the Adam and Eve theme with the portrayal of Stainislaw Przybyszewski - Munch's Polish poet fried, with his prominent bearded features.  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.

Przybyszewski's likeness in Jealousy has often been lined to Munch's presumably amorous relationship with the poet's wife, Dagny Juell, whom he painted in 1893 - the year of her marriage. the charged triangular situation, which in various degrees of recognizability reveals the features of the same protagonists, is also reflected in an oil of 1913 at the Munch-museet and in other related versions, among them Passion. Thus passion, jealousy, the biblical allegory of temptation, and an autobiographical incident converge in Munch's work, recurring in paintings and prints at different times.

Munch here preserves the anonymity of the situation by lending recognizable features to Przybyszewski only. Eve, partly covered by a scarlet garments, exposes a naked front - much in the way of the central figure in the various versions of Woman in three Stages. She is pictured as she picks the fateful apple - an act translatable to the jealous mind of the brooding foreground figures as apprehension in flagrante delicto. Przybyszewski's colorless features are in effective contrast with the sensuous redness of Eve's face and flowing garment.

A sinuous pattern envelops the work within a formal unity that comprises thinker and thought, dream and reality, lining Jealousy to the style of the 1890 known by such names as Art Nouveau and Jugendstil.