The Girl by the Window
Edvard Munch
EDVARD MUNCH, 1893. OIL ON CANVAS.
Surreal manifestations of modern anxieties, the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch used individual vignettes to speak to universal themes of loneliness, despair, and pain. Yet while his work has consistency in its emotional potency, his variation of style is enormous. This delicate, romantic image of girl, standing at the billowing curtains of a window in her flowing night dress as the light illuminates squares of darkness was painted in the same year as his more famous ‘The Scream’. While the latter work has become one of the most famous pieces of modern art, acclaimed for bold brushstrokes and radical composition that was inspired by his visits to mainland Europe and interactions with the impressionists and symbolistS, ‘The Girl by the Window’ speaks more to his native Scandinavia. Both in its romantic subject and its aesthetic style, it is a work firmly in the tradition of Northern Europe and yet for all of its simple, innocent beauty, there is the Munchian sense of disquiet across the canvas. We become voyeurs, peering in on our unknowing subject in the small of the night, watching a private moment of worry or despair as she contemplates, unaware of our presence.