Prints & Multiples
Prints & Multiples
Property from an Important Private Scandinavian Collection
EDVARD MUNCH | MELANCHOLY III (W. 203; SCH. 144)
Auction Closed
March 19, 05:10 PM GMT
Estimate
200,000 - 300,000 GBP
Lot Details
Description
Property from an Important Private Scandinavian Collection
EDVARD MUNCH
1863 - 1944
MELANCHOLY III (W. 203; SCH. 144)
Woodcut printed in brown, blue, blueish-grey and pale ochre, 1902, a very good impression of the third (final) state, Woll's colour variation four, signed in pencil, inscribed 'Kjopt av Edv. Munch 6. mai 1942 / Harald Holst Halvorsen' in black ink, presumably printed by the artist or Nielsen in 1915-17, on heavy cream wove paper, framed
image: 375 by 468mm 14¾ by 18⅜in
sheet: 519 by 631mm 20⅜ by 24⅞in
Melancholy is one of Munch's most remarkable colour prints. The dejected figure represents Munch's lifelong friend Jappe Nilssen, a Danish art critic whose doomed love affair with the married Oda Lasson Krohg is the cause of his distress. This motif appeared for the first time in a pastel of 1891 and was repeated in numerous paintings, as well as in the first printed rendition of the subject executed in 1896, Melancholy I. Munch revisited the subject in 1902 after a crate containing the 1896 woodblock went missing and added the figures of Oda and her husband approaching the rowing boat on the far shore. Unlike Melancholy I, Melancholy III bears a closer resemblance to the painted versions and is a more truthful depiction of the Åsgårdstrand landscape in terms of the orientation of the shoreline.
For Melancholy III, Munch once again mastered the complexity of his technique by combining a drawing block with a colour block sawn into three pieces. This allowed him to use different colours and change the sequence in which they were printed in order to create various emotive atmospheres. This impression is suggestive of an evening scene, with the dominant brown tone and pale blue sky replicating the faded, mellow light of a Nordic summer night.