Edvard Munch – The Angel of Death

The Angel of Death

The Angel of Death by Edvard Munch is an oil painting on canvas from 1893, held under inventory number MM.M.00756 by the Munch Museum (Munchmuseet) in Oslo. The original measures 77.5 x 58 cm. The scene is a darkened room at night: a bed runs the full width of the picture with a woman lying in it, and behind it, on a pedestal, stands a pale blue statue of an angel.

The woman lies with her head at the right on a pillow, her face turned in profile towards the left. Her eyes are closed, her skin pale with a greenish cast, her hair dark and combed back. Her body is covered by a white cloth that spreads in broad folds across the whole lower half of the canvas. Near the middle a pale hand rests on the cloth, and beside it a small greenish shape that reads as a posy.

Behind the bed, exactly at the centre, stands the angel in pale blue and whitish plaster. The wings are spread to either side, the arms lowered and open with the palms turned outward, the head slightly inclined. It stands on a low square pedestal and is painted as a statue rather than a living figure: the contour is hard and the surface even and without warmth.

At the far left a tall opening, perhaps a door or a window, is filled with yellow-green foliage and pale vertical strokes. It is the only bright part of the scene and the only colour that is not blue. At the upper right a small green half-round shape shows in the wall, reading as a lamp or a fanlight.

The wall is deep blue, painted in vertical strokes that Munch did not smooth away. A dark blue-black band runs along the lower edge, and a white lace border zigzags across the cloth. The signature is at the lower right.

The paint is thin and dry. In places it is dragged so sparely that the ground shows through; elsewhere it is laid in short vertical strokes that stay visible. The blue is not one blue: it is built from dark, grey-blue and greenish layers that only together give the sense of night. That unevenness is what makes the room deep, although it is almost without detail.

The structure is simple and quiet. The bed forms a strong horizontal across the lower half, the angel an upright exactly at the centre, and the lit opening a second upright at the left edge. Between them a large empty plane of blue gives the scene its silence. Nothing moves and nothing indicates what will happen; the statue stands, the woman lies, and the light comes from outside.

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 blue, which has to stay built from several layers; laid on as one even colour the room goes flat and the scene loses its depth.

The format is landscape and the scene dark, so this piece of wall art needs a calm, light wall and enough light for the face and the statue to be read at all. It works well in a bedroom, a study or a hallway, less well in a room with strong colour on the walls. Because the subject is quiet and almost without detail, it also carries close viewing and a smaller room. Hang it at eye level, in warm and even light.

Ten sizes are offered from 50 x 37 cm to 231 x 180 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.