Edvard Munch – Black and Yellow Man in Snow

Black and Yellow Man in Snow

Black and Yellow Man in Snow by Edvard Munch is an oil painting on canvas of 1910–1912, held under inventory number MM.M.00926 by the Munch Museum (Munchmuseet) in Oslo. The original measures 52.5 x 59 cm and stands upright. Two men stand in deep snow, one in black and one in yellow.

At the left a man strides forward in a dark, almost black suit. We see him from the front but with his head lowered, so the face barely reads; it is set down as a plain pink-red plane with no eyes and no mouth. The hands are given the same way, as two reddish marks beside the body, and below, the dark trousers end in heavy boots pushed into the snow.

At the right the second man stands turned straight towards us, in a bright yellow suit and a yellow cap. His face is a red mark too. He stands still, arms held a little away from the body, and it is that stillness which sets him against the striding dark figure at the left.

Between and behind them the snow rises: white and cream planes laid on in thick paint, with dark patches of rock opening between them where the snow has not covered the ground. At the upper right the snow lifts into a smooth drift, and at the upper left a red rectangular shape with a dark roof reads as a shed or a sledge.

The snow is not white. Munch builds it out of white, cream, pale blue and violet, and pulls the shadows into a cool blue that runs across the lower half of the canvas. It is those cool shadows that make the yellow suit at the right burn like a light.

At the lower left a dark green-black shape, probably a bush or a low tree, closes the corner and gives the scene weight on that side. Above runs a narrow band of pink-grey sky, with a small blue patch appearing in the upper left corner.

The colour rests on three clean notes: black, yellow and red, all three set against a cool white-blue ground. Because the background is busy but low in saturation, both figures come forward at once, even though they are painted with the same broad stroke as the snow around them.

The handling here is thick and open. The paint is laid wet into wet, in places in a single drag, in places thin enough for the weave of the canvas to show through. Munch painted a great deal outdoors and in winter during these years, and that directness is part of the scene.

The museum records the work as unsigned and dates it between 1910 and 1912. The title under which it is catalogued speaks only of the colours of the two figures, not of who they are; the painting does not say either, and that is what keeps it open.

The structure is simple: two upright figures on a broad white plane, one moving and one at rest. The eye goes first to the yellow, because it is the brightest, then returns to the dark figure, which is larger and nearer. Between them lies empty snow, and that emptiness is the real subject.

Ours is hand-painted in oil on canvas, stroke by stroke, made to order and never printed. Because each is painted for its own order, no two match down to the detail, and the small differences are the mark of a hand. The hardest passage here is the snow, which has to stay full of colour rather than settle into a white plane.

The format is upright and the colours clean and strong, so the painting suits a bright room: a living room, a hallway or an office. A quiet white or pale grey wall serves it best, since the yellow and the black carry all the emphasis themselves. Hang it at eye level in even light.

Ten sizes are available from 40 x 45 cm up to 180 x 200 cm, along with a custom size, framed or unframed. More of the artist is in the Edvard Munch gallery, and we write about his life and painting on the Edvard Munch blog.