Edvard Munch – Puberty

Puberty

Puberty by Edvard Munch is an oil on canvas of 1894, held under inventory number NG.M.00807 by the National Museum (Nasjonalmuseet) in Oslo. The original measures 110 x 151.5 cm and is in portrait format. A young girl sits on the edge of a bed, turned straight toward the viewer, and behind her a large dark shadow rises up the wall.

The figure is placed at the centre of the canvas. The girl sits upright, her arms crossed in her lap, her knees pressed together and her bare feet resting on a dark floor. Long dark brown hair falls over both shoulders. The face is pale, the eyes large and dark, and the look goes straight out of the picture, serious and reserved. The body is painted in pale pinkish cream, shaded along the sides with greenish grey.

The bed is indicated with a white and pale grey sheet holding greenish reflections, and beneath and behind it runs a dark red-brown horizontal band. The background is an olive-green and grey-brown wall, painted thinly and unevenly. At the right a large dark shadow rises behind the figure, blue-black and violet, oval in shape and noticeably larger than the body casting it. That shadow is the strangest part of the picture: it does not follow the light in the scene and behaves more like an independent form than an optical effect. A small red signature sits in the lower right corner.

The motif exists in more than one painted version. Our reproduction follows the one in the National Museum in Oslo, measuring 110 x 151.5 cm; a second painted version measuring 112.5 x 150 cm is in the Munch Museum and is a separate painting rather than a copy. The dating is not entirely settled: our specification gives 1894, while the museum record places the work across 1894 and 1895, and the literature therefore often cites it as 1894-95.

Munch laid the colour on thinly, without heavy impasto, and in places the weave of the canvas shows through, particularly in the wall behind the figure. The body is built from soft transitions, the shadow from long vertical sweeps that scatter toward its edges. There is almost no outline drawing; the forms emerge from the difference between tones.

Ours is a fine art reproduction, hand-painted in oil on canvas, stroke by stroke, and never printed. Because each canvas is made specifically for the order, no two match down to the detail; the small differences in the paint are the mark of a hand rather than a flaw. Of all the works on this shelf, this is one of the most demanding in the transitions across the skin.

The painting is upright and quiet, so it works well on a narrower wall or in an alcove where it has empty space around it – beside a doorway, along a hallway or in a bedroom. Hang it so that the face sits at roughly eye level, since the girl’s look then meets the viewer’s, which is the point of the scene. As hand-painted wall art it wants a neutral, slightly warm wall; strongly coloured walls quarrel with the greenish shadows. The light should be even and soft, without a hard beam, which would flatten the shadow behind the figure.

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.