Inger on the Beach

Inger on the Beach
German: Inger am Strand, Norwegian: Inger på stranden, Sommernatt
Artist Edvard Munch
Year 1889 (1889)
Type oil on canvas
Dimensions 126 cm × 161 cm (50 in × 63 in)
Location Kunstmuseum, Bergen

Inger on the Beach (also Summernacht; 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.

Description

A young woman, identified by the title as Munch's youngest sister Inger, sits in a quiet pose, a straw hat in 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.[1]

Munch uses a similar pose for his 1884 interior composition Morning, featuring a girl on the edge of a bed.[2]

Interpretation

Ulrich Bischoff suggests that Munch's earlier 1884 portrait of the then 14-year-old Inger, in her black confirmation dress, still looks as youthful work in the tradition of portraiture of the 19th century, the painting shows the future importance of the artist. From the compositional breakdown in horizontal and vertical axes of the known from the later life Fries topics loneliness, melancholy and angst to redesign an instantaneous scene in a fed through remembrance symbol of human existence there is Bischoff from the early image, the entire artistic repertoire painter read out.[3]

For Reinhold Heller the subject of Inger is on the beach less a time of day as a mood. The contours and dimensional representations of figure and stones, reminding nonexistent horizon between sky and sea and the almost monochrome blue on decorative arts.[4] Also Anni Carlsson remember the image of a "nature landscape" in which the mood beach, including sea and character and the limits cancels space.

Munch compared from the sea outstanding stones in a later statement with living creatures, goblins and sea spirits:[5] Nic. "In the night's light which forms have fantastic tones". Stang recalls the "simplification of form and color, which is a colored form against the other" to Paul Gauguin, a painter, Munch should only know when he is beaten in the same year Paris travel.[6]

Goals Skedsmo provides Inger on the beach even in the tradition of naturalistic painter of "Fleksum colony", namely Christian Skredsvig, Eilif Peterssen, Erik Werenskiold, Gerhard Munthe, Kitty Kielland and Harriet Becker, who were known for their quiet summer night moods. The composition of a figure in a landscape and the elegiac mood of the image point for Skedsmo on Munchs Norwegian colleagues, but added Munch these with his simplification of forms and the echo of a mood in nature already elements of modernity added. He may show already influences of Puvis de Chavannes and Jules Bastien-Lepage, whom he had met at the Exposition Universelle d'Anvers (1885), in the rigid countenance of Ingers with her blank stare and the dry inking.

History

In the summer of 1889, Munch rent 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 the friend of Munch, were Christian Krohg and Frits Thaulow. The place should acquire great importance in the life of Munch. Here he spent not only many summers, and bought in 1897 a house, it was the place for many important pictures of his life work. In the first year 1889, he portrayed here his youngest sister Inger, who had previously confessed to multiple model, pictured Inger on the beach. [4] This was preceded by a series of studies, Outdoors clock, that led Munch to study the lighting conditions of Norwegian summer night.[4]

A few months later, the image titled Evening at the annual autumn exhibition in Kristiana was first seen, while Munch had already traveled on to Paris to collect impressions of the local art scene through which he finally his symbolism- should find expressive style.[7] The inclusion in contemporary criticism was extremely hostile.[8] Morgenbladet called the painting pure "gibberish" and spoke of the audience will be fooled. Other voices complaining about "easily thrown stones that seem to be made only from soft, shapeless substance".[6] Aftenposten described the seated figure as "a physical entity with no trace of life and expression, as untrue in the form as in the color [...] On the whole this seems to us to have such a low artistic value that his presence at the exhibition itself is difficult to defend. " Dagbladet was nevertheless pointed out: "To understand it, one must constantly have in mind that Munch poet is - a person who can be entirely covered by a mood to her and her playing devotedly, without regard to conventional laws and forms, often with a tendency to fantasy. "[9] After all, an advocate found the picture:

Munch's Norwegian colleague Erik Werenskiold bought it yet directly at the exhibition[8] in 1909; it was acquired in 1924 by the Norwegian art collector Rasmus Meyer as part of his public collections in Bergen.

Notes

  1. ↑ Bischoff & 1988 p.17.
  2. ↑ O'Neill 1996, p. 13.
  3. ↑ Bischoff & 1988 pp. 17-18.
  4. 1 2 Heller & 1993 p. 38..
  5. ↑ Carlsson & 1989 p. 33..
  6. 1 2 Stang & 1981 p. 33.
  7. ↑ Skedsmo 1988.
  8. 1 2 Bischoff & 1988 p. 18.
  9. ↑ Carlsson & 1989 p. 34..

References

This article incorporates information from the equivalent article on the German Wikipedia.
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