The setting for Mondschein is undoubtedly Aasgardstrand where Munch had been renting a cottage since 1889. The house in the background could be either this cottage or the Kiosterud building which appeared in many of his paintings of the period. In 1891-2 Munch experimented in Inger in Aasgardstrand with the compositional device of a single female figure placed in the foreground of the picture. He further developed this in the painting Mondschein (National Gallery, Oslo) and The Voice executed at Aasgardstrand during the summer of 1893. In both pictures the female figure is seen nearly full-length. In the woodcut Mondschein of 1896 the impact is heightened by focussing on the head and shoulders of the woman and by a dramatic fore-shortening of the perspective.

Mondschein illustrates Munch's development of an individual method of colour printing his woodcuts. Having already experimented with the colour printing of lithographs and etchings, it was in 1896 that he began to concentrate almost exclusiveley on multi-colour printing in woodcut. Instead of inking a separate block for each colour he sawed up parts of a single block following the major compostional contours of the subject. Inking each segment with the desired colour he fitted them back together like a jigsaw and printed them in one pull. As in the present print he combined the jigsaw effect of one cut-up block with overprintings of the main line block.

Contrary to Schiefler, who thought that the blocks had gone missing, they have in fact survived and are housed today in the Munch Museum, Oslo