Edvard Munch

Johannes Lynneberg

Thora Lynneberg (1927)

Roleif M¢rk (1950)

Leif H¢egh (1950)

Ove & Westye H¢egh (1983)

Harald Lie (2001)

Acquired from the above in 2001

Kristiania, Tostrupgarden, Varm Soldag i en Furuskog,1892, no. 43

Berlin, Verein Berliner Kunstler, Dusseldorf, Schulte & Berlin, Equitable-Palast, Heisser Sommertag in einem Fohrenwalde, 1892, no. 27

Copenhagen, Kleis, Varm Sommerdag i en Granskov, 1893, no. 27

Blanch, Stockholm, Tallskog, 1894, no. 20

Olso, Nasjonalgalleriet, Furuskog, 1927, no. 286

Rome Complesso del Vittoriano, Munch, 2005, no. 10

Gerd Woll, Edvard Munch, Complete Paintings, Catalogue raisonné, vol. I, 1880-1897, London, 2008, no. 244, illustrated in color

Painted at the beginning of the 1890s, Furuskog is a striking example of Munch’s early work in the Impressionist style. Munch first came into contact with the French Impressionists through the painter Frits Thaulow, whose ‘open-air academy’ he attended at Modum. Thaulow was an important influence on Munch in his early years and it was as a result of his patronage that he first visited Antwerp and Paris in 1885. Munch returned to live in Paris in 1889, and his use of contemporary motifs, loose painterly technique, and the luminous palette that he adopted in the works of this period were clearly influenced by the Impressionists, and in particular Pissarro.

 

In the present painting of a pine forest, Munch employs these Impressionist techniques with subtle mastery; each stroke of paint is clearly defined and the visible energy of the brushstroke lends the painting a sense of spontaneity and immediacy. As with many of his landscapes of this period the emphasis is on evoking an atmosphere rather than specific physical details of a location; in the present work Munch achieves this brilliantly, capturing the very essence of a sunlit forest.

While in Paris, Munch also encountered the work of Symbolist painters, who, like Gauguin and Van Gogh, were beginning to focus on the expression of an inner world. Influenced by this, Munch began producing canvases that displayed an ever-increasing psychological intensity. As the decade wore on, his figures and landscape become more and more emotionally charged as Munch worked towards the form of expression that would characterise his mature work.