Description
Night in Nice
Night in Nice by Edvard Munch is an oil painting on canvas of 1891 that carries inventory number NG.M.00394 at the National Museum (Nasjonalmuseet) in Oslo. It measures 54 x 48 cm and looks down from above on a Mediterranean town at night: pale flat-fronted houses with dark roofs step down the slope, dark cypresses and shrubs grow between them, a dark ridge of hills lies across the middle of the picture, and above it stretches a broad sky worked in visible strokes. At the front right the ground falls away into a dark slope. This is the version our hand-painted reproduction follows.
Munch spent the winter of 1891 on the French Riviera, where he had gone for his health and where a series of small views of Nice and its surroundings came about. Scenes of this kind are rare in his work: instead of the anxious northern motifs this is a calm, almost orderly observation of a town, and there is not a single figure in it.
It is not a postcard, all the same. The forms are reduced to large planes, the windows are no more than dark patches, and the touch is dry and sparse, so that the weave of the canvas shows through the paint in places. The night light is not painted with strong contrasts but in muted, damped tones that push the whole scene into quiet.
Our reproduction is hand-painted throughout in oil on canvas, stroke by stroke and always to order; it is not a print. Because every canvas is made individually, tones and strokes differ slightly from one copy to the next.
The original is small and the mood is calm, so the picture works well in a smaller room – a hallway, a study or a bedroom – and equally as part of a group of pictures on one wall. Its sand, olive and bluish tones sit with warm wood and light walls; because the motif has no sharp centre, it does not compete with the other things in the room.
It is available in ten sizes, from a smaller horizontal format to a large canvas, and we can also make it to a size you specify. Other works by the same artist are among the paintings of Edvard Munch, and his life and work are covered in the biography of Edvard Munch.
| Year: | 1891 |
| Original size: | 54 cm x 48 cm |
| Style: | Impressionism |
| Original technique: | Oil on canvas |
| Located at: | National Museum (Nasjonalmuseet), Oslo |
