Edvard Munch – Kiss on the Beach

Kiss on the Beach

Kiss on the Beach by Edvard Munch is an oil painting on canvas of 1921, held under inventory number MM.M.00363 by the Munch Museum (Munchmuseet) in Oslo. The original measures 156 x 205 cm and stands upright. A man and a woman stand embracing on the shore beneath a moon, and their two heads run together into a single mass.

The couple stands left of centre, seen from the side. The man is in a dark blue-grey coat and dark trousers, his head bent down into hers. The woman faces him in a long pale blue-lilac dress reaching the ground, her arms round his shoulders and her face tilted up. Their faces do not meet as two faces but melt into one dark-and-pale mass; which is which can no longer be said.

At the upper left hangs a small pale yellow-white moon with a bright halo, against a green-teal patch of sky. Below it a tall pale column of reflection comes down the water in cream and white, and under that are a pale grey form and a red-pink band that reads as the hull of a boat.

Upper right of centre are large curved green and teal shapes like leaves or sails, with a red-brown one in the top corner. Along the right edge a tall violet-mauve post runs the full height, and beyond it a pale pink band. In the middle of the right side stands a tiny figure in white with orange-yellow hair on a pale pink jetty. The ground along the bottom is a dark green-blue, and a small ochre mark sits in the bottom right corner.

This is not The Kiss of 1897, the scene at the window in a room, which this shelf already sells. That one is indoors; this is 1921 and out on a shore under a moon. The catalogue also holds Kiss on the Shore by Moonlight of 1914, measuring 100.5 x 77 cm, which is again a different work. Ours is the canvas MM.M.00363 at 156 x 205 cm.

The surface is heavily abraded. Large areas are carried by bare warm-grey ground, and the paint sits in patches rather than as a continuous film; in places the canvas is barely covered at all. That is the state of the object, not a shortcoming of the photograph. The handling is thin and late, with contours pulled round the figures in a dark line over colour already dry. It is the wear itself that makes the scene read as something that has already happened and is fading.

Ours is one of the reproductions of famous paintings we make by hand in oil on canvas, stroke by stroke, and never print. Because each canvas is painted for its own order, no two match down to the detail; the small differences in the paint are the mark of a hand rather than a flaw. This motif is demanding in the two heads, which have to melt into one another without becoming a smudge; separate them and the reason the picture exists is gone.

Because the format is upright and the range restrained, the painting needs a tall quiet wall. As wall decor it suits a bedroom, a hallway or a staircase; in a room of strong colour the grey-brown ground disappears. It works best on a warm light wall that supports the warm grey. Hang it at eye level, since both figures are standing. The light should be warm and soft, as a cool lamp makes a worn surface look dirty rather than old.

Ten sizes are available from 48 x 62 cm up to 180 x 230 cm, 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.