Edvard Munch – The Voice

The Voice

The Voice by Edvard Munch is an oil painting of 1896, held under inventory number MM.M.00044 by the Munch Museum (Munchmuseet) in Oslo. The original measures 120 x 90.5 cm. A young woman stands among tree trunks at the shore, turned straight toward the viewer, and behind her a vertical reflection shines on the water.

She stands left of centre and fills almost the whole height of the canvas. She wears a pale bluish-white dress, and her arms are held behind her back, which squares the shoulders and makes the stance stiff, almost ceremonial. Long reddish-brown hair falls straight down both sides of her face. The face is pale and mask-like, with two large dark eyes that read as hollows and a small closed mouth.

Behind her rises a summer-night wood. Four or five dark brown, almost black trunks run the full height of the canvas and cut it into vertical bands; the girl stands among them as one more upright body. The upper background is a strong blue, the lower a deep green-blue. Right of centre a vertical pale yellow-cream column rises on the water – the reflection of the sun or moon, painted as a long bar with a rounded top and a few horizontal marks beneath it. Along the right edge runs a pink-pale-brown band of shore with white marks. In the upper left corner small pale yellow and white flower-strokes sit on the blue.

The scene belongs to the Frieze of Life and carries a second title, Summer Night, under which the work appears in the museum record. The motif of a shore with an upright reflection on the water returns throughout Munch’s life; our reproduction follows the version in the Munch Museum measuring 120 x 90.5 cm. The title The Voice refers to something that cannot be seen on the canvas, which is characteristic of Munch: what is painted is the moment just before a sound, or just after it.

The paint is laid on very thinly and in broad, quiet planes; the blue of the background is almost even, without strokes to pull the eye. The trunks are drawn in single sweeps from top to bottom. The dress is the only part with soft transitions, and the face is painted with less colour than anything else in the picture. In places the weave of the canvas shows through.

Ours is among our reproductions on canvas, hand-painted in oil, 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. With this motif the demanding passage is the blue plane, which must stay even and deep rather than going flatly blue.

The painting is calm, cool and almost without contrast, so it works where the viewer takes time: a bedroom, a study or beside a reading chair. Because it is blue throughout, it suits a warm wall – sand, oatmeal or pale timber – that balances the blue; against a cold grey wall it goes colourless. Hang it at eye level, since the girl’s look carries the whole scene. Among reproductions of famous paintings this one wants soft, diffuse light, without a strong beam that would put out the yellow column on the water.

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.