Edvard Munch – Ashes

Ashes

Ashes by Edvard Munch is a painting of 1895, held under inventory number NG.M.00809 by the National Museum (Nasjonalmuseet) in Oslo. The original is oil on canvas and measures 141 x 120.5 cm. A woman stands at the edge of a wood with her hands behind her head, and at her feet a man crouches so low that he turns into a dark mass.

The woman is placed right of centre and turned straight toward the viewer. Her hair is long, loose and auburn, falling over both shoulders. Both arms are raised with the hands behind her head and the elbows spread wide. She wears a long white shift that hangs open at the front and reveals a red bodice beneath it; that band of red is the strongest colour on the canvas. Her face is pale and fixed, the eyes wide open.

In the lower left corner the man crouches, bent so deep that only a narrow strip of pale face and his dark hair remain visible; everything else is a single black plane. He is turned completely away. Between and below them the foreground is made of pale grey-white and pinkish stones. Behind them rises a dense forest of vertical trunks in dark browns and greys against an almost black-brown ground, with a band of dull green at the left. An ochre patch sits in the lower right corner, and a painted strip runs along the left edge like a border.

The painting belongs to the Frieze of Life and counts among its most direct scenes. The reading that this is the moment after a love encounter recurs throughout the literature and follows from the posture of the two figures: one open and turned toward us, the other closed and turned inward. That is an established interpretation rather than museum record; what is not in dispute is the arrangement, since the figures do not touch and do not look at one another.

The paint is laid in broad, soft planes, and the forest in long vertical strokes that Munch did not cover over. The white dress is the only part with a denser loading and therefore stands out physically as well. There are almost no contours; the figures separate from the background by tone alone. Along the edges the paint is thin and the weave of the canvas shows through.

Every order is a hand-painted oil reproduction, made by a painter in oil on canvas, stroke by stroke, and never printed. Because each canvas is made individually, no two match down to the detail; the small differences in the paint are the mark of a hand rather than a flaw. This motif is demanding because of the dark forest, which must stay deep and must not go flatly black.

The format is nearly square and the composition is heavy in the lower half, so the painting needs a wall where it has some air above it. It works well in a study, a library or a longer hallway; for a bedroom the scene is too dark. Because the background is almost black, it wants a light wall – white, oatmeal or pale grey – that opens the dark mass up; on a dark wall the forest is lost. As wall decor it should be lit warmly and from a direction, so that the white dress and the red bodice come alight.

Ten sizes are available along with a custom size, and every canvas can be ordered framed or unframed. More of the artist is in the Edvard Munch gallery, and we write about his life and painting on the Edvard Munch blog.