Edvard Munch – Man and Woman

Man and Woman

Man and Woman by Edvard Munch is a painting of 1898, held under inventory number RMS.M.00255 by the Art Museums of Bergen (KODE). The original is oil on canvas and measures 100 x 60.2 cm. Two nude figures sit in a darkened interior, each alone, and a broad band of darkness runs between them.

At the left sits a woman, turned almost straight toward the viewer but with her head lowered and inclined to her right. Her body is painted in pale cream-pink tones, her hair is dark, and her hands rest in her lap. Behind her head hangs a large curtain-like plane in a muted rose, almost dusty pink, the only lighter mass of colour in the upper half of the canvas. Her legs are pressed together and extend toward the lower right corner.

At the right sits a man, bent forward with his head lowered into his arms, so that his face cannot be seen at all. His body is painted in darker orange-brown and ochre tones, his back is curved, and dark hair falls forward. He is turned inward and away from her. Between the two figures runs a broad band of near-black shadow that separates them completely; that empty dark space is in fact the subject of the picture. The background is dark brown, and olive-green and yellow-ochre streaks appear in the upper right corner.

The work belongs to the group of Munch’s scenes about the relation between man and woman that he painted through the 1890s. He treated the motif of two separated nudes more than once; our reproduction follows the Bergen version measuring 100 x 60.2 cm, not one of the later ones made around 1913 that are in the Munch Museum. The figures are shown neither quarrelling nor embracing, but in the moment of being together and nevertheless each alone.

The paint is laid on thinly and in broad planes, without detail. The bodies are built from a few large strokes, and there are almost no faces: the woman’s is in shadow and the man hides his. The edges are soft and in places body and background merge, so that the two figures seem to be part of the same dark space. The muted rose plane behind the woman is the only passage where the paint is a little denser.

Ours is among the reproductions of famous paintings we make in oil on canvas, hand-painted, 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. As hand-painted canvas art this motif is demanding precisely because of the dark band at the centre, which must stay deep and must not turn grey.

The format is markedly horizontal and low, so the painting works well above a bed, a chest of drawers or a longer cabinet, where it has room to run. Because the whole range is dark and warm, it wants a light wall that is not white: an oatmeal, sand or pale grey ground lifts it, whereas on a white wall it reads as a dark stripe. Hang it a little lower than usual, since both figures are seated and the scene is seen at their height. The light should be warm and soft; cold light pushes the orange-brown tones toward grey.

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.