Edvard Munch – Workers Returning Home

Workers Returning Home

Workers Returning Home by Edvard Munch is an oil painting on canvas of 1920, held under inventory number NG.M.02819 by the National Museum (Nasjonalmuseet) in Oslo. The original measures 138.5 x 79.5 cm and lies across. The scene is a crowd of workers in caps and dark coats surging straight towards the viewer and filling the whole width of the canvas.

The front figures are large and dark, their faces given in a few strokes and without detail. Behind them the figures shrink quickly until, in the distance, they are no more than short vertical strokes; that rapid fall in scale is the only means by which the depth is made. A factory with a tall chimney stands at the right, a latticed pylon rises into the sky at the left, and low hills run along behind them. The road descends towards us and has no edge, so that the crowd seems about to come out over the bottom of the canvas.

The canvas is signed and dated: E.Munch 1920. The motif occupied the painter for years. The well-known large version, roughly 201 x 227 cm, is in the Munch Museum; our source is the smaller canvas in the National Museum, which carries its own museum record and is its own work rather than a copy of that one. The worker subject entered Munch’s painting after 1909, when he returned to Norway and began working on large public commissions.

The paint is laid quickly and in broad planes. The coats are built from dark blue, brown and black drags that scarcely separate from one another, and the faces from pale patches with a few dark strokes. In places the layer is thin enough for the weave of the canvas to show through. The palette is restrained: dark clothes, a grey road, a brick factory and a pale sky.

Ours is hand-painted in oil on canvas, brush stroke by brush stroke, made to order and never a print. Because every canvas is made individually, tones and strokes differ slightly from one to the next; those small differences are the mark of a hand rather than a flaw. The hardest passage here is the crowd in the background, which must stay legible as people instead of becoming a mere pattern of strokes. As a museum-quality reproduction this is one of the more demanding motifs, precisely because of that passage from large to small.

The format lies across and the scene is forceful, so the painting needs a wide quiet wall and some distance: a living room, a dining room, an office or a hallway. A light, neutral wall serves it best, since the work itself is dark and dense; a strong colour beside it would take away its weight. Hang it at eye level in even light. Among famous paintings on canvas this one works best alone, since the motif already presses forward on its own.

Ten sizes are available along with a custom size, and every canvas can be ordered framed or unframed. You choose the frame in our 3D app, where mouldings and colours can be tried against this motif; a plain dark moulding supports the seriousness of the scene. More of the artist is in the Edvard Munch gallery, and we write about his life and painting on the Edvard Munch blog.