Werner Timm - Edvard Munch - 1982

24 Winter, Kragero

1 0 3 x 1 2 8 cm. Oil on canvas. 1 9 1 5 . Oslo, National Gallery

Ever since Pieter Brueghel the Elder discovered the magic of winter landscapes for easel pictures back in the l 6th century the subject has never ceased to fascinate artists . We need only to think of the 1 7th century painter known as the Master of Winter Landscapes whose very designation is derived from his preferred genre. Few modern artists have been occupying themselves with this subject as inten­ sively as Munch. Especially after he had returned to Norway he painted many pictures of the Oslo fjord landscape in snow. His mo­ tifs are neither sensational nor deeply symbolical. They are plain

and simple yet filled with a contemplative calm born from the artist's admiring love for this stark and lonely scenery the grandeur of which revealed itself to him at its most overwhelming in winter.

Munch traces the softened contours of the snow-covered rocky coast, he shows the rocks that break through the snow layer and leads our eye to the expanse of wintery water in the fjord . The dark shapes of the rocks impart life to a landscape otherwise dominated by white and pale blue, heightened only by the peculiar greenish and purplish accents in the coastal stretches.

Very soon after his return to Norway in 1 909 Munch bought a p rop­ erty called Skrubben in the village of Kragero on the north shore of the Oslo fjord, and for many years this was the place where he liked to spend the winter.

25 Workers Going Home

2 0 1 x 22 8 cm. Oil on canvas. 1 9 1 6. Oslo, Munch Museum

This picture is quite different from the "Men Shovelling Snow" in that its effect is downright depressing. That oppressive feeling of man being impelled by "powers" over which he has no control which Munch has so often sought to express has here been cast into an ex­ plicitly social mould-reminiscent of Steinlen or Kathe Kollwitz. The scene is probably a shift change in a factory or mine. The men

emerge from somewhere in the depth of the picture. The irresistible stream of exhausted workers making for home with tired steps seems likely to jostle the imaginary onlooker. We know from occas­ ional remarks that Munch had great sympathy with the working class and was aware of their mounting power. It was Zola who in his novel "L'Assommoir" gave the first brilliantly suggestive descrip­ tion of the endless streams of labourers and skilled workers con­ verging on an industrial town in the early hours of the morning.

Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen possesses a second ver­ sion of this large impressive painting.

28 Between Clock and Bed. Self-Portrait

1 5 o x 1 20 cm. Oil on canvas. 1 940. Oslo, Munch Museum

Munch painted this self-portrait at the age of seventy-six, four years before he died . He had once more escaped from death's clutches. Having recovered from a severe illness he was ready to face life anew, albeit with slack and nerveless limbs .

The picture is filled with radiantly luminous colour. Even the geo­ metrical pattern of the counterpane in which closely j uxtaposed complementary colours heighten each other is exciting in its bright-

ness. One might see in this an optimistic affirmation of life were not the manner of painting somewhat hectic, if not alarming, so that one cannot help asking oneself whether the convalescent will be able to stand so much exuberance.

It is no accident either that Munch puts himself standing next to a clock, symbol of time inexorably running out. This theme is accentuated by the warm sonorous chord of the brown clock case while the pale nude figure on the opposite end of the wall has the effect of a fading memory.

Underlying this whole picture we once again find that dualism of the powers of life and death which for Munch was so important.