Edvard Munch
1892
Oil paint on canvas
Edvard Munch places us on Oslo’s main boulevard in the path of a press of oncoming figures. Their ghostly faces and the eerie evening light heighten the work’s unsettling atmosphere. Munch’s writings suggest that this painting was inspired by a memory of searching the avenue Karl Johan for a woman with whom he was infatuated and of becoming emotionally overwhelmed in the crowds. This was the first time Munch depicted such skeletal figures staring out of the canvas. He used the device again in his famous work The Scream, which he exhibited alongside this painting as part of his series ‘The Frieze of Life’.