Description
The Fairytale Forest
The Fairytale Forest by Edvard Munch is an oil painting on canvas of 1901 that carries inventory number NG.M.02237 at the National Museum (Nasjonalmuseet) in Oslo. It measures 106.5 x 79 cm and shows a group of children seen from behind: they stand on the edge of a grassy slope and look into a dense spruce wood. Two boys in caps stand at the left, a figure in a wide white hat in the middle, a smaller child in a pale hat beside her, and a further dark figure at the right. The forest rises in front of them as a row of sharp dark spikes, a pale sky with drawn-out clouds stands above it, and a light path winds away at the right. This is the version our hand-painted reproduction follows.
The title says how Munch understood the scene: the wood is not described botanically but as the backdrop of a fairytale, one the children are looking into but have not yet entered. The trees are reduced to almost uniform dark triangles while the children are painted softly and small; the contrast between the two carries the whole tension of the picture.
The work belongs to Munch’s years around 1900, when alongside the great Frieze of Life motifs he was also painting landscapes and scenes with children, often near Åsgårdstrand. The paint layer is thin and in places translucent, so that the weave of the canvas shows through, which gives the scene the look of a memory rather than of an observation.
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 picture is calm and narrative, so it works well in a child’s room, a bedroom or a living room where it can be looked at for a while. Its greens, blues and creams sit with light wood and with white or greenish walls; because the motif is dense in its lower half, it is better hung a little higher so that the bottom edge does not fall behind furniture.
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: | 1901 |
| Original size: | 106.5 cm x 79 cm |
| Style: | Expressionism |
| Original technique: | Oil on canvas |
| Located at: | National Museum (Nasjonalmuseet), Oslo |
