Edvard Munch – Melancholy

Melancholy

Melancholy by Edvard Munch is an oil painting on canvas made between 1894 and 1896, held under inventory number RMS.M.00249 by the Art Museums of Bergen (KODE), in the Rasmus Meyer Collection. The original measures 100.5 x 81 cm. A man sits in the foreground with his head propped on his hand, and behind him a shoreline opens in a long curve with tiny figures out on a jetty.

The man’s head and shoulders take the right third of the canvas and reach the lower edge. We see him in three-quarter profile, turned to the left; he props his chin on his hand and his eyes are lowered. His hair is dark brown, his face ochre yellow, and his coat heavy and dark maroon. His other hand rests clenched at the bottom edge.

To his left and along the lower edge lie large rounded forms of shore rock, painted in pink, salmon, cream and ochre, with a green streak and a dark brown curving shape drawn between them. The shore climbs in a long arc from the lower left corner toward the middle right; the beach is pink-mauve and grey-lilac, and the water a pale grey-lilac with a few darker swirls. A small red-orange boat lies on the water at the left.

In the distance, out on a jetty, stand tiny figures: one pale, almost white, with one or two dark ones beside it. They are small enough to be overlooked, though they carry the entire meaning of the scene. Behind them rises a low greenish-yellow headland with dark trees and a small house with a red roof at the right. The sky is pale grey-lilac, streaked with violet and pink.

The painting belongs to the Frieze of Life. It is usually connected with the unhappy love affair of Munch’s friend Jappe Nilssen, and it is that connection which leads the figures on the jetty to be read as a couple and a third who watches; this is an established interpretation rather than museum record. What is not in dispute is the arrangement: the one who is thinking is large and near, and the thing he thinks about is small and far away.

Munch laid the colour in broad, softly rounded planes without hard edges, so that rocks, beach and even the coat become waves of a single line. There is no outline drawing; the forms are separated only by a difference in tone. The paint is thin, and in several places the weave of the canvas shows through, the face being the one part where the loading is denser and more worked.

Ours is an oil on canvas reproduction, 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. This motif gains a great deal at a middle or larger size, since only then do the figures on the jetty separate clearly.

Among famous paintings on canvas this is one of the calmer motifs on the shelf: no strong contrasts, and a range of soft pinks, lilacs and maroons. It therefore suits a room meant for rest – a bedroom, a living room or a work corner – and it will take a wall in a warm colour, which is rare with Munch. Hang it at eye level or a little below, since the scene is built around a seated figure. The light should be soft and diffuse; hard beams break up the gentle transitions along the shore.

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.