Edvard Munch – Weeping Nude

Weeping Nude

Weeping Nude by Edvard Munch is an oil painting on canvas made between 1913 and 1914, held under inventory number MM.M.00540 by the Munch Museum (Munchmuseet) in Oslo. The original measures 135 x 110 cm. The scene is horizontal and shows a naked woman kneeling on a red bed, bent forward.

The figure occupies the middle of the canvas and is turned slightly to the left. The upper body is deeply bowed, the back curved into a wide arc and the head lowered almost to the bedding. That arc is the strongest shape in the scene and carries the eye down from the right shoulder toward the centre.

The face is not visible. A heavy mass of dark hair falls across it, spilling from the crown over the shoulder and covering every feature. The hair is painted almost black, with a few warmer brown and reddish strokes along its edges, and it is the darkest place on the canvas.

The right arm is stretched across the bed toward the right edge. It is painted broadly, in pale pink and greenish flesh, and the hand is lost in the red of the bedding. The left arm lies beneath the head and is barely separable from the hair.

The legs are folded under the body. Thigh and knee turn toward the viewer and are painted in a light, cool pink with greenish shadows; with the outstretched arm they are the brightest areas in the scene.

The bed fills the whole lower half of the canvas in a deep red. It is laid in with long horizontal strokes that do not blend, and in places the weave of the canvas shows through. Runs of paint have trickled downward in several spots and were left uncorrected.

The wall behind is pink and greyish, with violet and grey patches brushed in wide circling strokes. There is no window and no wall corner; the space stays shallow and undefined, so the figure does not recede but remains close to the viewer.

Along the right edge stands a dark blue-green form reaching almost from top to bottom. It is most likely the back of a chair or a drape; no detail is given. This cool area balances the warm red of the bed and closes the scene on the right.

The paint is thin and quickly laid. The strokes are broad, in places the colour barely holds the canvas, elsewhere it is worked wet into wet. The surface is not smoothed and not finished in the ordinary sense, and that openness is what gives the scene its tension.

The motif belongs to a group of nudes the painter made in the years before the First World War, while he was working on his properties at Hvitsten and Kragero. The model is not known by name. The title does not describe an action we can see: the weeping is read from the posture, not from the face, because there is no face.

The structure rests on the contrast between the warm red lower half and the cooler pink upper half, with the dark mass of hair lying between them. The horizontal bed and the vertical blue-green form at the right make a corner into which the figure is set. That is why the scene feels compressed despite its quiet shape.

Our version is hand painted in oils on canvas, stroke by stroke, and is never printed. Because every canvas is made to order, no two match in every detail; small differences are the mark of a human hand, not a fault. The hardest passage here is the flesh, which must stay cool and light against the strong red.

The format is horizontal and the colours warm and saturated, so the painting works well in a bedroom, a study corner or a quiet hallway where the viewer stands close. Keep the wall behind it light and neutral; against a strongly coloured wall the red of the bed loses its force. Hang it at eye level in soft, even light.

Nine sizes are offered, from 45 x 38 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.