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Edvard Munch

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The Girl by the Window

Date:

1893

Artist:

Edvard Munch
Norwegian, 1863-1944

About this artwork

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.

On View

European Painting and Sculpture, Gallery 245

Artist

Edvard Munch

Title

The Girl by the Window

Origin

Norway

Date

1893

Medium

Oil on canvas

Inscriptions

Inscribed lower right: E - Munch

Dimensions

96.5 × 65.4 cm (38 × 25 3/4 in.)

Credit Line

Searle Family Trust and Goldabelle McComb Finn endowments; Charles H. and Mary F.S. Worcester Collection

Reference Number

2000.50

Extended information about this artwork

Dr. Relling, "Der Fall Munch," Die Kunst für Alle 8, no. 7 (1893), p. 102.

Harold Holst Halvorsen, Katalog av Edvard Munchs Kunstverker samlet av Harold Holst Halvorsen, Kunsthandler (Oslo, 1952), p. 4 (ill.).

Paris, Musée d'Orsay, Munch et la France, exh. cat., 1992, fig. 89.

Jan Kneher, Edvard Munch in seinen Ausstellungen zwischen 1892 und 1912: Eine Dokumentation der Ausstellungen und Studie zur Rezeptionsgeschichte von Munchs Kunst (Worms, 1994), pp. 10, 15, 369.

Jay A. Clarke, "Girl Looking out the Window" in Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 30, 1, (2004), pp. 70-71 (color ill.).

Jay A. Clarke, "Munch's Critical Reception in the 1890s and His 'Place' in History" in Seeing and Beyond: Essays on Eighteenth- to Twenty-First-Century Art in Honor of Kermit S. Champa (New York, 2005), pp. 191-92, 199, fig. 3.

Gerd Woll, "Use and Re-Use in Munch's Earliest Paintings," Munch Becoming "Munch": Artistic Startegies 1880-1892, Exh. cat. (Munch Museet, 2008), ill. 84, p. 93-94, p. 97, ill. 98, p. 100, p. 150, p. 179, p. 199, p. 226, cat. 171.

Gerd Woll, Edvard Munch: complete paintings: catalogue raisonné, Vol. 1, (London, 2009), cat. no. 303.

Anne Buschhoff, "Liebe, Angst und Tod in Werken von Edvard Munchs Zeitgenossen-Max Klinger, Odilon Redon, Félicien Rops, Félix Vallotton und andere," Edvard Munch: Rätsel hinter der Leinwand, ed. Dorothee Hansen, Exh. cat. (DuMont, 2012), p. 74, ill. 75, p. 166, (ill.), p. 221.

Kristiania (present-day Oslo), Juveler Tostrups Gaard, Edvard Munch's Maleriudstilling, September 1892, no. 45.

Berlin, Verein Berliner Künstler, Sonder-Ausstellung des Malers Edvard Munch aus Christiania, November 5-19, 1892, no. 23; traveled to Düsseldorf, Eduard Schulte, November 1892; Köln, Eduard Schulte, December 1892; Berlin, Equitable-Palast, December 1892 - January 1893; Copenhagen, Skandinavisk Kunstudstillings Lokaler, February - March 1893; Dresden, Victoriahaus, May 1893.

Lugano, Museo d'Arte Moderna, Edvard Munch, September 19-December 13, 1998, no. 15

Vienna, Graphische Sammlung Albertina "Edvard Munch: Themes and Variations" March 14-June 22, 2003, cat.

84.

Oslo, Munch Museum, "Munch becoming Munch: Artistic Strategies, 1880-1892," October 8, 2008-January 12, 2009, cat. 171 (ill.).

Chicago, The Art Institute of Chicago, Becoming Edvard Munch: Influence, Anxiety, and Myth, February 14-April 26, 2009, cat. 14 (ill.).

Bremen, Kunsthalle Bremen, Edvard Munch - Mystery behind the Canvas, October 15, 2011-Febiary 26, 2012, no. 21 (ill.).

Arthur von Franquet (died 1931), Braunschweig, from 1893 [acquired directly from the artist; see correspondence in Munch Museum archives, Oslo]; by descent to his nephew Herbert von Franquet, 1931. Sold to Neue Galerie, Vienna, 25 September 1935 [letter from Otto Kallir Nirenstein, Neue Galerie, to Edvard Munch, 26 September 1935, in Munch Museum archives, in which he states that he bought the picture the previous day and it "stammt aus der Sammlung Franquet," copy in curatorial file]. Harald Hort Halvorsen, Oslo, 1937 [bought in Paris in 1937 according to Halvorsen 1952]; sold by him to Pål Kavli, Oslo, c. 1937; by descent to Kavli's second wife, Reidun Kavli (died 1996) [see correspondence and notes in curatorial file]; sold to Mr. Allan Andersen, Denmark; Luc Bellier, Paris as agent for Allan Andersen; sold to the Art Institute, 2000.

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The Girl by the Window | The Art Institute of Chicago

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Show this image The Girl by the Window 1893 Edvard MunchNorwegian, 1863-1944 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.

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George Caleb Bingham (PD)

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Self Portrait with Thorn Necklace & Hummingbird

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Self Portrait with Thorn Necklace & Hummingbird

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Frida Kahlo

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Perhaps, no other quote describes Frida Kahlo's Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird more succinctly than this one.

Many of Frida Kahlo's paintings are more like painted collages of symbols. Painted after her (first) divorce from Diego Rivera, every symbol in this painting gives specific clues to Frida's mental state. Her still, direct, emotionless gaze seems to express the immediacy of her pain (she was madly in love with Rivera). In a direct reference to Christ and his suffering, she showed herself wearing a necklace of thorns. Is she showing herself to be a martyr? The blood trickling from the wounds could be interpreted as an illustration of her emotional crisis.

Also on the necklace we see a dead hummingbird, the shape of its wings echoing the shape of Frida's own eye brows. In Mexican culture the bird is a symbol of good luck and that could have been Frida Kahlo's own way of hoping for better luck after the painful divorce. Yet at the same time she placed a black cat over her left shoulder, a symbol of bad luck and death. Is she doubting her recovery after all? Now look at Frida's right shoulder and you'll see a monkey, a gift from Diego Rivera but also a symbol of the devil. It seems to be tightening the necklace around her neck, making her bleed even more. As we move upwards, we see her hope for a new life in the form of the butterflies, alluding to resurrection in the form of transformation.

One of the foremost female Mexican surrealists of the early 20 th century, Frida Kahlo's work was always rich with imagery of her native Mexican and Aztec cultures. In 1938 André Breton, principal initiator of the surrealist movement, described Kahlo's art as a "ribbon around a bomb". Some of her other themes originated in the mental and physical anguish caused as a result of a devastating bus accident she suffered as a child in 1925.

She was quoted saying "I paint myself because I am so often alone and because I am the subject I know best".

This article © galleryIntell

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Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird by Frida Kahlo

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Perhaps, no other quote describes Frida Kahlo's Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird more succinctly than this one. Many of Frida Kahlo's paintings are more like painted collages of symbols. Painted after her (first) divorce from Diego Rivera, every symbol in this painting gives specific clues to Frida's mental state.

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Composition with Large Red Plane, Yellow, Black, Gray, and Blue

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