Edvard Munch – Girl Yawning

Girl Yawning

Girl Yawning by Edvard Munch is a painting of 1913, held under inventory number SS.00046 in the Rolf Stenersen Collection in Bergen. The original is oil on canvas and measures 100 x 110 cm. A young woman sits on the edge of a bed caught in mid-yawn: her head is tilted back, her mouth wide open and her eyes closed.

The figure sits at the centre of the canvas, turned toward the viewer. Her dark hair is loose and falls freely on both sides of her face. Her upper body is bare, painted in pale yellow-cream and white with pink accents. A white sheet lies across her lap and thighs. Her legs are bare and come forward and down in cream-yellow and pink; her arms hang at her sides with the hands resting on the bed.

The bedding is a strong crimson red at the left and right, laid on with broad strokes and scumbled over with pink and white. In the upper right corner is a large dark grey-purple mass with violet strokes and a pale X-shaped mark. The wall behind is pale pink, mauve and cream, loosely brushed. A dark green-teal band runs along the left edge, and at the right stands a pale turquoise angular form with visible legs – a table or a chair – with pink-red gleaming behind it. A signature sits in the upper right corner.

The museum record lists the work under the title Morning Yawn, while our shelf gives it as Girl Yawning; both names refer to the same painting, and the inventory number identifies it. The scene is everyday and without symbolism, which sets it apart from Munch’s work of the 1890s: there is no fjord here, no crowd and no death, only the moment just after waking. Our reproduction follows the Bergen version measuring 100 x 110 cm.

The paint is applied thinly, quickly and in a high key; this is late Munch, painting with a great deal of white and a sparse, almost translucent layer. The strokes are long and visible, the edges never close, and in several places the weave of the canvas shows through. The red bedding is the only passage of stronger saturation and it holds the whole composition together.

Ours is a hand-painted oil reproduction, made in oil on canvas, stroke by stroke, and never printed. Because each canvas is made specifically for the order, no two match down to the detail; the small differences in the paint are the mark of a hand rather than a flaw. With this motif the light is the hardest part: the colour has to stay thin and translucent, since a dense loading takes the morning character out of the scene.

As hand-painted wall art this is one of the few Munch motifs entirely suited to a bedroom or a bright living space: the scene is calm and the colours are light and warm. The format is nearly square, so it works well alone on a narrower wall or above a low chest. Because red and turquoise are opposites, it wants a calm light wall; a strongly coloured ground overfills the scene. The light should be natural or warm white, since cold light pushes the red bedding toward violet.

Ten sizes are available along with a custom size, and every canvas can be ordered 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.