Edvard Munch – Model by the Wicker Chair

Model by the Wicker Chair

Model by the Wicker Chair by Edvard Munch is an oil painting on canvas made between 1919 and 1921, held under inventory number MM.M.00499 by the Munchmuseet in Oslo. The original measures 100 x 122.5 cm. The scene is upright and shows a standing female nude in a studio interior, with a wicker chair beside her over which a large red cloth is thrown.

The figure stands to the right of centre and takes up the whole right half of the canvas. She faces the viewer directly, but her head is tilted to her own right and slightly down, so her eyes do not meet ours. Her arms hang at her sides, the hands close to the thighs and not clasped. Long dark hair falls across both shoulders and partly across the face.

The body is painted pale, in cream, white and light green, with blue and pink shadows. The contours are not blurred but drawn with a coloured line that stays visible. Small as it is, the face is fully worked: eyes, nose and mouth are set down in red, orange and blue-green strokes, and the cheeks are warm. The hair is blue-black, laid in broad flowing strokes that follow the fall of the locks.

At the front left stands the wicker chair, spread with a large cloth in red, orange and dark brown. Dark circular and ring motifs repeat across it, painted quickly and without precise edges. This red mass is the warmest and densest area in the picture and fills almost the whole lower left quarter.

Behind the figure the room opens up. At the left is a window with violet, green and white panes, beside it a pale pink wall with a small framed rectangle. Nearer the centre stands a tall green upright form, and below to the left a table with a light basin. Upper right is a wall of yellow ochre, and along the right edge a dark green-black rectangle with a blue-white patch reading as a door or mirror.

The floor is pale grey-violet, in thin long strokes running diagonally towards the lower right corner. The paint is thin and broad throughout. In many places it is so sparse that the weave shows through, which here is not a shortcoming but the method: the ground takes part in the colour and the space stays airy.

The work belongs to the years when Munch lived at Ekely outside Oslo and painted regularly from the model. Comparable scenes date from this time, in which a nude figure stands in a lit room among furniture and fabrics. The scene is not there to tell a story; it is a painter’s problem, in which pale skin meets the strong colour of cloth.

The structure rests on the opposition of two masses. On the right stands the light upright of the body; on the left sits the low, heavy, hot mass of red cloth. Between them the empty floor leads the eye into depth. The cool colours of the room behind and the warm red in front press the figure into the middle, so she reads as calm and exposed at once.

Our version is hand-painted in oils on canvas, stroke by stroke, and is never printed. Because every canvas is made individually to order, no two match down to the last detail; small differences in the paint are the mark of a human hand and not a fault. In this fine art reproduction the hardest passage is the body, built from thin and almost transparent layers; if the paint is laid on more thickly the skin loses its light and the figure turns rigid.

The format is upright and medium in size and the colours strong, so this piece of wall art needs a calm, light wall and some distance. It works well in a bedroom, a living room or a studio, less well against a very warm or patterned ground, where the red cloth loses its force. Hang it at eye level in even, neutral light, since the pale body bleaches quickly under a hard lamp.

Ten sizes are offered from 40 x 50 cm to 130 x 160 cm, along with a custom size; every canvas can be ordered framed or unframed. More of the painter’s work is in the Edvard Munch gallery, and we write about his life and work on the Edvard Munch blog.