Edvard Munch – On the Operating Table

On the Operating Table

On the Operating Table by Edvard Munch is an oil painting on canvas made between 1902 and 1903, held under inventory number MM.M.00022 by the Munch Museum (Munchmuseet) in Oslo. The original measures 149 x 109 cm. The scene is horizontal and shows a naked man lying on his back on an operating table.

The body stretches across the full width of the canvas, the head at the right and the feet at the left. It lies flat on a white sheet, arms at the sides, chest and stomach turned upward toward the viewer. That long horizontal figure is the spine of the whole composition.

The head is thrown back, the chin raised, the mouth slightly open. The hair is dark and thick and spreads across the sheet. The face is painted in a pale yellowish flesh with dark shadows in the eye sockets, so that it reads as absent and without consciousness.

At the left stands a nurse in a white gown with a dark collar and apron. In both hands she holds a shallow basin containing a vivid red liquid. Hers is the most compact and most darkly outlined figure in the scene, and she closes the left edge.

Behind the table stand three figures in white. Their heads are painted as dark ovals with almost no features; one of them is turned downward toward the body. They are not individuals but a row of white shapes rising behind the horizontal table.

A large red stain lies in the middle of the sheet. It is painted thickly and saturated, with a hard edge, and runs down over the edge of the table in thin trickles. It is the strongest colour on the canvas and the first thing the eye catches.

In the upper right corner a rectangular field outlined in a dark line is crowded with a row of heads. These are spectators above the scene. The faces are indicated with a few pink and brown strokes and have no eyes; they read as a crowd, not as people.

The wall is ochre yellow, laid in with long slanting strokes that do not blend. The weave of the canvas shows through the colour everywhere, and in places the ground is not covered at all. The paint is thin and quickly applied, with no smoothing.

The colour structure rests on three bands: the warm ochre wall above, the row of white figures in the middle, and the white table with the body below. Into that quiet scale only two strong accents are set, the red stain on the sheet and the red basin in the nurse’s hands.

The background to the scene is known. In the autumn of 1902 the painter was wounded in the hand when a revolver went off during a quarrel, and he had to undergo a procedure. The scene is not a record of that event; Munch reworked it into an arena with spectators, where the body on the table is put on show.

That raised viewpoint places the viewer among the students. The horizontal body, the vertical white figures and the field of heads in the corner make a triangle that leads the eye from the feet across the red stain to the face and then up to the onlookers. This is why the scene works as a performance rather than a report.

Our version is hand painted in oils on canvas, stroke by stroke, and is never printed. Because every canvas is made to order, no two match in every detail; small differences are the mark of a human hand, not a fault. The hardest passage here is the red stain, which must stay dense and must not turn brown.

The format is horizontal and the colours warm and earthy with a single strong accent, so the painting works well in a study, a library or a quiet hallway. Keep the wall behind it light and neutral; against a yellow or red wall the ochre ground merges with the wall. Hang it at eye level in even light.

Nine sizes are offered, from 50 x 37 cm to 150 x 115 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.