Edvard Munch – Moonlight

Moonlight

Moonlight by Edvard Munch is an oil painting on canvas of 1895, held under inventory number NG.M.02815 by the National Museum (Nasjonalmuseet) in Oslo. The original measures 110 x 93 cm and stands upright. The scene is a night shore: a pale moon stands high in the sky, and its reflection falls on completely still water as a long, straight column of light.

Dark tree trunks close the composition at the left and the right, running the full height of the canvas. Two trunks stand close together at the left, a single one at the right, and above it a dark green crown spreads out. In the upper left a heavy dark cloud drags across the sky. The sky is deep blue and green-blue, the water below it lighter and as smooth as metal. In the middle of that smoothness lies the moon’s column: straight, a little wider at its foot, and the only vertical besides the trunks. Along the shore runs a horizontal band of pale rounded stones in pink and white, and dark green grass closes the scene at the bottom. Everything is reduced to broad horizontal bands: sky, sea, stony shore and grass stack one above the other, and only the trunks and the column of light break that stacking. There is no figure, no boat and no house; the scene is empty, and that emptiness is what makes it quiet.

The work belongs to Munch’s symbolist years in the middle of the 1890s. The museum records it as Moonlight of 1895 under NG.M.02815. To avoid confusion, it should be said plainly that the same museum holds a second painting titled Moonlight under NG.M.01914, and a work called Moonlight by the Mediterranean under NG.M.00842. Our source is the 1895 canvas NG.M.02815 and neither of the other two. The reflection of the moon on still water is a recurring motif in Munch’s northern summer nights and appears in others of his shore scenes as well; here it is carried out most strictly, almost geometrically.

The paint layer of the original is thin and smooth, with no worked-up texture. Munch pulls the colour in broad horizontal drags that follow the bands of sky and water, and sets the trunks down in a few dark vertical strokes. It is that smoothness which makes the column of light read as though cut into the water rather than laid on top of it. The palette is narrow: the blues of the sky, the cool light of the water, the pink-white shore and the dark green below. The bands are set side by side rather than blurred, so colour carries the depth instead of perspective.

Ours is hand-painted in oil on canvas, brush stroke by brush stroke, made to order and never a print. Because each is painted for its own order, no two match down to the last detail, and the small differences are the mark of a hand rather than a flaw. The hardest passage is the moon’s column, which must stay calm and straight without hardening into a white line. Among famous paintings on canvas this motif is one where it pays to wait for the right blue in the sky.

The format is upright and the mood quiet and cool, so the painting suits a bedroom, a quiet corner of a living room, or a hallway. A calm, pale wall serves it best, since the work itself is dark; against a strongly coloured wall the blue of the sky loses its depth. Hang it at eye level in soft, even light, avoiding a hard spotlight, which would throw a reflection off the smooth surface. As hand-painted wall art for a room where people read or rest in the evening, it works better than in a bright and busy one. Because the motif is upright and narrow, it also sits well above a slim chest of drawers, beside a door, or in an alcove where a wider painting would have no room.

Ten sizes are available along with a custom size, and every canvas can be ordered framed or unframed. You choose the frame in our 3D app, where mouldings and colours can be tried against this motif. More of the artist is in the Edvard Munch gallery, and we write about his life and painting on the Edvard Munch blog.