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Lot Essay
Filled with a richly nuanced play of color, Morgen, Naken kvinne ved vinduet was painted in 1902, a breakthrough year in the career of Edvard Munch. The artist had moved to Berlin the previous November, renting a large studio at 82 Lützowstrasse, where he could receive friends and clients, and work on commissioned portraits. A few months later, in the spring, he exhibited twenty-two of his most important works from the 1890s at the fifth exhibition of the Berlin Secession to great success. This cycle of paintings, known collectively as the Frieze of Life, covered themes of love, loss, fear and death, and catapulted Munch to new levels of renown among German audiences. He soon became acquainted with a series of important patrons, including Dr. Max Linde and Albert Kollmann, who actively promoted his work, purchasing and commissioning paintings from the Norwegian artist. It was during this pivotal moment that Munch embarked upon a sequence of closely related canvases depicting the nude female model within his Berlin studio offering an intriguing glimpse into the creative space in which he was then living and working.
Munch employed several different professional artists’ models that winter, their forms reappearing in different configurations and poses within the studio. Contemporary photographs reveal this was a somewhat chaotic environment, in which numerous works-in-progress were left on the floor, finished canvases were stacked against bookshelves or the walls, leaning haphazardly at unexpected angles, alongside the artist’s scattered belongings and painting materials. In Morgen, Naken kvinne ved vinduet, the young woman is seen from behind as she stands before the tall window by the artist’s bed and reaches out a hand to part the translucent drapery, allowing the bright, early morning light to enter the room. The downward tilt of her head suggests she is sneaking a look at the goings-on of the street below, her attention drawn elsewhere, leaving her unaware of the artist’s focused attention. There is a sculptural voluptuousness to her form, emphasizing her physicality and presence, her curves delineated with soft, flowing contours. The sharply contrasting light, meanwhile, generates a dynamic play of shadows within the scene, casting the young woman’s body in an array of luminous hues and tones, as the sunlight dances across her skin.
There are clear parallels between the present work and another composition from this year, Akt i interiør (Woll, no. 509; Private collection), where the same model is seen from a different angle, positioned between a round table and an armoire, her pose suggesting she is in the middle of dressing. Both of these paintings reveal the influence of French art on Munch at this time—the artist was an avid admirer of both Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painting, which he had first discovered after his move to Paris in 1889. Over the course of his numerous visits to the French capital through the fin-de-siècle, Munch gained an in-depth understanding of the contemporary avant-garde and its developments. In paintings such as Morgen, Naken kvinne ved vinduet, Munch appears to channel the radical depictions of the female nude in the recent work of Edgar Degas and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, both of whom explored intimate visions of women in an enclosed, interior setting, as they went about their daily routines. Here, Munch imbues the scene with a delicate sensitivity, capturing a relaxed view of the woman as she occupies and moves through the artist’s private rooms.
The composition also reveals the impact of Munch’s burgeoning interest in photography at this time—the artist had purchased his first camera in early 1902, a small Kodak that could be easily operated by an amateur. As Arne Eggum has noted, Munch may have originally intended to use the camera to aid in his portraiture, taking photographs of his subjects which he could study between sittings (see Munch and Photography, trans. B. Holm, New Haven, 1989, pp. 95-100). However, Munch quickly began to explore the potential of the photograph as a means of creative expression, playing with different techniques and angles, exploiting the effects of double exposure and movement, to create intriguing images that revel in the particularities of the medium. Several of Munch’s earliest photos from January and February 1902 focus on life in the studio in Berlin, and include self-portraits of the artist alongside his paintings, as well as a pair of images of a semi-nude female model, with long, unbound hair and black stockings, looking coquettishly over her shoulder towards the camera. These photographs provided the direct stimulus for his 1902 painting Akt med langt rødt hår (Woll, no. 503; Munch Museet, Oslo). While there are no surviving photographs of the model from Morgen, Naken kvinne ved vinduet in the studio, the distribution of light, the framing of the figure against the window, and the spontaneous, snap-shot effect of her pose reveal Munch’s intense interest in the compositional and lighting effects of photography at this time, as his explorations in the medium began to inform his painterly practice.
As Morgen, Naken kvinne ved vinduet demonstrates, however, Munch was not interested in translating the objective, precise realism of photography into his work. Instead, the woman’s form is rendered with a bold painterly quality, her body modelled using a highly nuanced range of tones, from soft peachy pinks and golden-olives, to passages of bright green and touches of blue, with delicate scoring of black pigments delineating the shadows. The sunlight streaming through the window adds layers of pure golden tones to the scene, catching and highlighting the folds of the delicate fabric of the drapes, as well as the woman’s face. Eschewing the precise details of her features, Munch instead focuses solely on the way the light hits her visage, transforming it into a plane of pure pigment. Across the canvas, Munch applies his paint quickly, using vigorous, zig-zagging brushstrokes that overlap and shift direction, leaving the traces of his painterly process visible to the viewer, revealing the spontaneity and vibrancy of the artist’s technique.
The first owner of Morgen, Naken kvinne ved vinduet was the German-born industrialist Otto Schulz, who had moved to Norway following his marriage, and built a collection through the opening decades of the twentieth century focusing on local painters and contemporary art. In 1915, Schulz loaned the work, alongside another of his Munch paintings Pikene på broen (Woll, no. 540; Private collection), to the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco. The work remained with Schulz until the late 1920s, and passed through several important collections on both sides of the Atlantic, before being acquired by the Saltzmans in 1986.
Munch employed several different professional artists’ models that winter, their forms reappearing in different configurations and poses within the studio. Contemporary photographs reveal this was a somewhat chaotic environment, in which numerous works-in-progress were left on the floor, finished canvases were stacked against bookshelves or the walls, leaning haphazardly at unexpected angles, alongside the artist’s scattered belongings and painting materials. In Morgen, Naken kvinne ved vinduet, the young woman is seen from behind as she stands before the tall window by the artist’s bed and reaches out a hand to part the translucent drapery, allowing the bright, early morning light to enter the room. The downward tilt of her head suggests she is sneaking a look at the goings-on of the street below, her attention drawn elsewhere, leaving her unaware of the artist’s focused attention. There is a sculptural voluptuousness to her form, emphasizing her physicality and presence, her curves delineated with soft, flowing contours. The sharply contrasting light, meanwhile, generates a dynamic play of shadows within the scene, casting the young woman’s body in an array of luminous hues and tones, as the sunlight dances across her skin.
There are clear parallels between the present work and another composition from this year, Akt i interiør (Woll, no. 509; Private collection), where the same model is seen from a different angle, positioned between a round table and an armoire, her pose suggesting she is in the middle of dressing. Both of these paintings reveal the influence of French art on Munch at this time—the artist was an avid admirer of both Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painting, which he had first discovered after his move to Paris in 1889. Over the course of his numerous visits to the French capital through the fin-de-siècle, Munch gained an in-depth understanding of the contemporary avant-garde and its developments. In paintings such as Morgen, Naken kvinne ved vinduet, Munch appears to channel the radical depictions of the female nude in the recent work of Edgar Degas and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, both of whom explored intimate visions of women in an enclosed, interior setting, as they went about their daily routines. Here, Munch imbues the scene with a delicate sensitivity, capturing a relaxed view of the woman as she occupies and moves through the artist’s private rooms.
The composition also reveals the impact of Munch’s burgeoning interest in photography at this time—the artist had purchased his first camera in early 1902, a small Kodak that could be easily operated by an amateur. As Arne Eggum has noted, Munch may have originally intended to use the camera to aid in his portraiture, taking photographs of his subjects which he could study between sittings (see Munch and Photography, trans. B. Holm, New Haven, 1989, pp. 95-100). However, Munch quickly began to explore the potential of the photograph as a means of creative expression, playing with different techniques and angles, exploiting the effects of double exposure and movement, to create intriguing images that revel in the particularities of the medium. Several of Munch’s earliest photos from January and February 1902 focus on life in the studio in Berlin, and include self-portraits of the artist alongside his paintings, as well as a pair of images of a semi-nude female model, with long, unbound hair and black stockings, looking coquettishly over her shoulder towards the camera. These photographs provided the direct stimulus for his 1902 painting Akt med langt rødt hår (Woll, no. 503; Munch Museet, Oslo). While there are no surviving photographs of the model from Morgen, Naken kvinne ved vinduet in the studio, the distribution of light, the framing of the figure against the window, and the spontaneous, snap-shot effect of her pose reveal Munch’s intense interest in the compositional and lighting effects of photography at this time, as his explorations in the medium began to inform his painterly practice.
As Morgen, Naken kvinne ved vinduet demonstrates, however, Munch was not interested in translating the objective, precise realism of photography into his work. Instead, the woman’s form is rendered with a bold painterly quality, her body modelled using a highly nuanced range of tones, from soft peachy pinks and golden-olives, to passages of bright green and touches of blue, with delicate scoring of black pigments delineating the shadows. The sunlight streaming through the window adds layers of pure golden tones to the scene, catching and highlighting the folds of the delicate fabric of the drapes, as well as the woman’s face. Eschewing the precise details of her features, Munch instead focuses solely on the way the light hits her visage, transforming it into a plane of pure pigment. Across the canvas, Munch applies his paint quickly, using vigorous, zig-zagging brushstrokes that overlap and shift direction, leaving the traces of his painterly process visible to the viewer, revealing the spontaneity and vibrancy of the artist’s technique.
The first owner of Morgen, Naken kvinne ved vinduet was the German-born industrialist Otto Schulz, who had moved to Norway following his marriage, and built a collection through the opening decades of the twentieth century focusing on local painters and contemporary art. In 1915, Schulz loaned the work, alongside another of his Munch paintings Pikene på broen (Woll, no. 540; Private collection), to the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco. The work remained with Schulz until the late 1920s, and passed through several important collections on both sides of the Atlantic, before being acquired by the Saltzmans in 1986.