Description
Winter in the Woods, Nordstrand
Winter in the Woods, Nordstrand by Edvard Munch is an oil painting on cardboard of 1899 that carries inventory number NG.M.00570 at the National Museum (Nasjonalmuseet) in Oslo. It measures 90 x 60.5 cm and shows a snow-covered spruce wood: dark trunks rise out of deep snow, the upper half of the picture is filled by a heavy dark canopy with patches of snow lying on the boughs, and below stretches a broad white drift with rounded snow mounds at the left and the right. A bluish shadowed track winds between them. This is the version our hand-painted reproduction follows.
The scene comes from Nordstrand near Oslo, where Munch was living at the time. The contrast is extreme: near-black trunks against near-white snow with no middle tones, so that the wood reads as a cut-out silhouette. The snow, however, is not a flat white but a reduced net of bluish and grey shadows that only together give the impression of light.
The support is not canvas but cardboard, which Munch often used for works painted quickly and out of doors. He laid the colour on dry and in bands, so the texture of the board shows through the paint in places. Our reproduction is made in oil on canvas, like everything on this site; the original technique is given in the table below.
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 bright and graphically clear, so it works well in a room with darker furniture that lacks light – a dining room, a hallway or a living room. The white and bluish planes throw light back and open the room out, while the dark trunks give the wall a rhythm; because the motif is wide and low, it sits well above a longer piece of 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: | 1899 |
| Original size: | 90 cm x 60.5 cm |
| Style: | Expressionism |
| Original technique: | Oil on cardboard |
| Located at: | National Museum (Nasjonalmuseet), Oslo |
