Maurice Prendergast – Two Women Crossing a Field

“I shall not speak, I shall think about nothing”

Maurice Prendergast, Large Boston Public Garden Sketchbook – Two women crossing a field, 1895-97, watercolour

Two ladies in white dresses are walking through a yellow field. With their dainty parasols and elegant hats they almost look like porcelain dolls. The scene is closely cropped and we don’t get to see much of the nature around them. We don’t even see the sky the way we do in similar paintings by Claude Monet. Instead of a detailed portrayal of clouds and grass, Prendergast focuses on the intense yellowness of the field and offers us a sketchy but joyous scene in nature. The summer’s ripeness and vibrancy are at their peak. The lady’s red sash is dancing in the wind and its vibrant red colour contrasts beautifully with the yellow and white. Prendergast wonderfully masters the colour scheme where each colour brings out the vibrancy of the other. All of Prendergast’s watercolours have an uplifting effect on me and I really love how he wasn’t shy about using all the rich shades of colours. His love of raw, bright colours and flatness comes from his years of working in commercial arts. The watercolour sketches in the Boston sketchbook were all made after his return from Paris where he was introduced to the art of Aubrey Beardsley, Edouard Vuillard and Pierre Bonnard, but despite all these influences Prendergast returned to America with a vision of art that was playful, childlike, vibrant and completely his own. He took the Impressionist motives of leisure and nature but decided to portray them in the medium of watercolours instead of the traditional oil on canvas. This particular sunny, summery watercolour has been on my mind for a long time now and I thought what better time to write about this lovely watercolour than in the warm, yellow month of July? To end, here is a very fitting poem by Arthur Rimbaud called “Sensation”:

“On the blue summer evenings, I shall go down the paths,
Getting pricked by the corn, crushing the short grass:
In a dream I shall feel its coolness on my feet.
I shall let the wind bathe my bare head.

I shall not speak, I shall think about nothing:
But endless love will mount in my soul;
And I shall travel far, very far, like a gipsy,
Through the countryside – as happy as if I were with a woman.”

Henri Rivière – Funeral Under Umbrellas

“Rain down alienation
Leave this country
Leave this country….”

(Manic Street Preachers, Love’s Sweet Exile)

Henri Rivière, Funeral Under Umbrellas, 1895, etching

Rain has many faces. It is different in every season and in every place; spring rain is exhilarating, summer rain can be exciting and when you get drenched to the bone in July there is nothing that makes you feel more alive, whilst rain in November makes you wanna be – not alive anymore because it’s so depressing. Spring rain in the countryside can be so dreamy, when afterwards the grass is wet and the blossoms of the apple trees are dotted with rain drops and the air smells divine. Rain in the city can be depressing on a grey February day, but it can be also be magical in April when the pavements at night glisten in the light of streetlamps and streets are empty. Rain is two-faced and tricky because it can convey so many different moods and is equally hard to capture it in art, for how do you capture something quick and fleeting? A rain drop falls on the ground before you know it and how do you capture its fall. Other motifs can indicate its presence in the painting, such as umbrellas, puddles and ripples one the surface of a puddle, river or a lake, but rain itself is tricky to paint and throughout art history it wasn’t such a common motif.

At last, in the second half of the nineteenth century, led by the Impressionists’ desire to capture the nature and the fleeting moment, rainy days have found their place in paintings. Renoir’s painting “The Umbrellas” is the first that comes to mind when I think of rainy days in art and it is my favourite by Renoir, I just love the bustle of the street and all the blue umbrellas, and also it reminds me of the video for the song Motorcycle Emptiness by the Manic Street Preachers shot in rainy streets of Tokyo with many colourful umbrellas. Another stunning example of rainy day in art is Henri Rivière’s etching “Funeral Under Umbrellas”, c 1895, which was heavily influenced by Japanese art and when I first saw it, for a second I thought it was indeed a Japanese print. It is simple but atmospheric.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, The Umbrellas, 1883

There are three key artistic elements borrowed from Japanese prints that Rivière used in this painting; firstly the obvious flatness of the surface, secondly, the use of diagonal composition which makes the painting seem dynamic and it beautifully takes our eyes on a trip from the first dark silhouette with an umbrella all the way to the carriage in the background, there’s also a dynamic play of empty space on the left with the space full of figures on the right half of the painting, thirdly the way rain is painted in diagonal lines falling from right to the left part of the painting, that is exactly how rain is depicted in so many Ukiyo-e prints and it is really stunning. I like the philosophy behind such portrayal of rain; real world is one thing and art is another world for itself and so why portray something exactly like it is in nature if you can come up with a new pictorial language for the world of art.

Rain looks one way in real life, but in Ukiyo-e prints rain is a bunch of diagonal lines and it works wonderfully. You can see that in Utagawa Hiroshige’s print “Mimasaka Province: Yamabushi Valley”; the lines representing rain are even thicker and stronger than Riviere dared to make them. In Ando Hiroshige’s print you can see the diagonal composition similar to the one in Riviere’s etching. Also, the fact that Riviere didn’t paint this oil on canvas but made an etching also shows an interested in Japanese art because the effect is similar whereas oil on canvas is something Japanese artists wouldn’t use.

Utagawa Hiroshige, Mimasaka Province: Yamabushi Valley (Mimasaka, Yamabushidani), from the series Famous Places in the Sixty-odd Provinces [of Japan], 1853

Ando Hiroshige, Ama-no Hashidate in the province of Tango, 1853-56

Pierre Bonnard – Street Scene

Pierre Bonnard, Street Scene, 1899, four panel screen, colour litograph

Pierre Bonnard was fascinated by the liveliness and vibrancy of Parisian streets and parks where nannies, dogs and children play in sunny spring days and he painted many such vibrant street scenes, but this “Street Scene” (also known as “Nannies Promenade, Frieze of Carriages”) is a special street scene because the common Impressionist and Post-Impressionist motif of a street scene is inspired by the Japanese art and it also exhibits the philosophy of the Nabis group that art should be present in everyday life, in everyday objects such as tapestries, fans, posters and decorative folding screens. A century and a half before Bonnard, the art of Rococo had already shown a fondness for folding screens which were painted in the spirit of chinoserie, but the artists who painted the screens were always anonymous and unimportant, but in the late nineteenth century the artists of Post-Impressionism and Nabis found a tremendous source of inspiration in Japanese art and works such as this street scene by Bonnard are a delightful mix of Post-Impressionist European art and the influence of Japan.

Bonnard, a young artist at the time, first painted the screen in distemper (pigment in glue) on canvas with carved wood frame in 1895. In 1894 in a letter to his mother he spoke about the idea for the painting: “I am working on a screen […]. It is of the Place de la Concorde with a young mother walking with her children, with nannies and dogs, and on top, as a border, a carriage rank, and all on a light beige background which is very like the Place de la Concorde when it’s dusty and looks like a miniature Sahara.” And in 1895-96 around a hundred and ten colour lithographs were made and the one you see here is one of them. Half of those lithographs were destroyed in a flood in Paris in 1940. They were sold either individually or in a set and could either be mounted on the screen and served as a decoration in the room, or they could have been framed and placed on the wall as a panting. It is beautiful to see it flat like a painting and also beautifully folded in zig zag way, each vertically enlongated screen is an artwork for itself and yet it created a scene for itself. This narrow vertical canvas is called “kakemono” in Japanese art, and the action in the painting is suppose to be read in Japanese way, from right to left.

Bonnard showed a great interest in the folding screens and the first one he created was “Women in the Garden” in 1891 but in that folding screen every part of the canvas was filled with pattern and colour. In contrast, “Street Scene” is beautifully empty and there is an intricate visual play between groups of figures and the empty space. The figures are flat and simple. The placement of figures seems spontaneous but is actually carefully planned and it looks beautiful when the screen is opened or flat. The group of figures in the foreground are a fashionably dressed mother with her two children who are playing with sticks and hoops, a game seen often in the art of the Impressionists. A little black dog is here too. In the background three almost identically dressed nannies, and a row of carriages with horses behind them.

 

Maurice Prendergast – Watercolours: Hats, Veils and Flowers

“..the June nights are long and warm; the roses flowering; and the garden full of lust and bees..”

(Virginia Woolf in a letter to Vanessa Bell c. June 1926)

Maurice Prendergast, Large Boston Public Garden Sketchbook: Two women conversing on the street, 1895-97, watercolour

Maurice Prendergast was a wonderful American Post-Impressionist painter whose vibrant paintings I have discovered this year and I already wrote about his art on three previous occasions; about his watercolour beach scenes, painting Lady with a Red Sash and his watercolour Mothers and Children in the Park. The latter is a part of the “Large Boston Public Garden Sketchbook”, basically a book of sketches that Prendergast made from 1895 to 1897, right after his return from Paris. The lovely watercolours I am sharing with you today are all part of that sketchbook too. The watercolour above, as the title itself says, shows two fashionable Victorian women having a chit chat in the park. I really love the composition of the watercolour; the mysterious lady in red is seen from the back but her figure occupies most of the paper. We can see her wonderful shining and new white parasol, her hat with a veil covering her face and I adore that vibrant and romantic red colour of her dress and of the flowers on her hat. The figures in the backgrounds are a puddle of soft greys.

Let’s imagine we are truly sitting on a bench in a lovely park on a warm and sunny summer day; we see the ladies in the distance chatting and holding their parasols, we hear birds chirping, sun coming through the lush green treetops and warming our shoulders, and our vision goes from the talkative fashionable ladies to two young girls dressed in pretty blue and yellow gowns with ribbons around their tiny waists. Despite their fashionable appearance, they are still not the posh and proper ladies but children at heart and they run around playing, smiling and laughing. The ribbons of their dresses are dancing in the air as they run and the wind might blow their little hats away. The watercolour I was describing is the one you can see bellow called “Young girls in hats and sashed dresses”; notice the pencil traces of two other girl figures that Prendergast, for some reason, never painted in watercolour. I love the accuracy and immediacy of these watercolours, I can just imagine Prendergast directly sketching the real life around him and still imbuing the scenes that he was seeing with his inner magic and vibrancy, painting in vivid cheerful colours and portraying the scenes with a touch of childlike playfulness.

Maurice Prendergast, Large Boston Public Garden Sketchbook: Young girls in hats and sashed dresses, 1895-97, watercolour

And also, everyone who loves and knows the history of fashion will notice how accurately the fashion is captured in these watercolours; the veiled hats and the puffed sleeves were all the rage in the last decade of the nineteenth century. You can especially notice this in the last two watercolours where the ladies are dressed to impress and Prendergast’s brush strokes on the ladies’ sleeves are just wild in “A woman in a veiled hat decorated with poppies” where the blue meets the rosy shades. And let’s take a moment to appreciate the fact that the woman’s hat is decorated with poppies. How romantic and extravagant! Also, I love the wonderful cherry red parasol in “A Woman Reading a Book” and the lady’s sweet smile under the veil. I wonder what she is thinking of, or rather, of whom is she thinking of whilst reading that book. All in all, these watercolours have the usual Prendergast’s vibrancy and vivacity which just makes me smile. Gazing at these idle and carefree garden scenes truly makes me think of roses blooming, bees buzzing and laughter lingering in the air…

Maurice Prendergast, Large Boston Public Garden Sketchbook: A Woman Reading a Book, 1896-97, watercolour

Maurice Prendergast, Large Boston Public Garden Sketchbook: A woman in a veiled hat decorated with poppies, 1895-97, watercolour

Maurice Prendergast: Mothers and Children in the Park

“The true secret of happiness lies in taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life.”

(William Morris)

Maurice Prendergast, Large Boston Public Garden Sketchbook: Mothers and Children in the Park, watercolor over pencil, 1895-97

This is not the first and probably not the last post I wrote about Maurice Prendergast. I already wrote about his dazzling and vibrant watercolour beach scenes and about his dreamy and radiant La Belle Epoque portrait of the Lady with a Red Sash. Today, let us take a look at this beautiful watercolour “Mothers and Children in the Park” which was painted around 1895-97, right after his return from Paris. It’s part of Prendergast’s “Large Boston Public Garden Sketchbook”.

Maurice Prendergast studied in Paris from 1891 to 1895 at the Académie Colarossi (Modigliani’s lover and muse Jeanne Hébuterne also studied at this academy, though many years later) and Académie Julian. In Paris he met Aubrey Beardsley, Walter Sickert, Édouard Vuillard and Pierre Bonnard with whom he shared artistic ideas and these friendships inspired him to experiment with compositions and formats of his paintings. Along with these progressive artistic ideas of Pointilism, Japonism and rudiments of Art Nouveau (through Aubrey Beardsley’s art), Prendergast was naturally introduced to the wonders of Impressionism and the theme of this watercolour is very Impressionistic: a carefree, lazy, sunny day in the park. The world “impression” was originally used pejoratively to describe a sketchy, carefree style which differed greatly from the precise, no-brushstroke-seen style of the Academic art. In that sense, this lovely watercolour is a true “impression” of a sunny, warm, radiant afternoon in a park. A moment of quiet joy captured in a dazzling harmony of pinks, greens and yellows. Everything looks trembling and alive and colours fully contribute to this mood.

Bellow I have included an array of details of this watercolour and these details really show the true beauty of this artwork. You can see the pencil appearing under the watercolour, the soft transitions and mingling of the watercolour. Something about two different shades of watercolour mingling together in a kiss and creating another shade gives me such a thrill. Such radiance and vivacity! A watercolour “impression” of such a simple, everyday motif as is a day in the park gives an even greater immediacy and liveliness to the motif than the usual oil on canvas that the Impressionist were painting. I especially love the detail of the little girl in pink dress with puffed sleeves and wheat-coloured hair. Her lovely oval face is but a few strokes of pencil and dashes of blue for eyes, so simple and effortless, yet so lovely.

George Hendrik Breitner – Girl in Red Kimono

The same thing happens to me this time of the year when the winter is giving way to spring, the first white blooming trees are looming one the horizon in the pinkish but still chill dusk. A certain rare disease whose symptoms are hard to explain suddenly overwhelms my body and soul, leaving me fatigued, dreamy and unable to think of anything else. The disease is called madness for Japonism. My heart aches for cherry blossoms, zen gardens, mystic temples, lanterns, kimono, the vibrancy and the serenity. Unable to fully cure this madness, I can alleviate the symptoms and the only way to do so is to gaze at Ukiyo-e prints and admire their wonderful strangeness and exoticism, soak myself in Whistler’s serene paintings in white and grey and listen to Debussy’s sonata for flute, viola and harp which instantly transports me to an exotic gardens, fragrant and serene where under moonlight the cherry blossoms spill all their naughty secrets to my ears.

George Hendrik Breitner, Girl in Red Kimono, Geesje Kwak, 1893-95

Before we properly start with the post, I want us all to take a moment to fully appreciate the gorgeous red colour that Breitner used without shyness on all of these paintings, whether it’s the case of a bold glimmering red kimono with white flower print, or a grey-white kimono with tiny red flowers which look like exploding red stars, so vivacious and so powerful. The red colour on any canvas just transforms things for me, takes them on an entirely new level. It just has a mesmerising effect on me, especially when I think of the delightful contrast between the passionate bold red and the delicate soft pink-white of the newly sprung blossoms.

The main model for all these lovely paintings was a working class sixteen year old girl called Geesje Kwak who had the luck and privilege to be transformed, at least in the artist’s studio and on the canvas, to a beauty from the far east, dressed in fine soft silks and holding a Japanese doll in her hands. This series of Japonism paintings by a Dutch painter George Hendrik Breitner is by far the most beautiful example of the portrayal of kimono in the nineteenth century western art. Breitner was nor the first nor the last painter who was inspired by Japanese art but he was a rare one who focused not exclusively on , but solely on kimono, the vibrancy and the patterns.

George Hendrik Breitner, Girl in a kimono (Geesje Kwak) in Breitner’s studio on Lauriersgracht, Amsterdam, 1893

After Japan started trading with the West in 1854, almost over night the Western market was flooded with Japanese woodcut prints known as Ukiyo-e prints. These vibrant, strange and exotic woodcuts were something completely new to the western eyes and soon enough Japonism became all the rage in the artistic circles and this influence didn’t decrease as decades passed but only grew stronger and even influenced the early twentieth century art movements such as Art Nouveau. The Impressionists were the first group of artists to create works inspired by the far east. Artists such as Edgar Degas, Edouard Manet, Whistler, Vincent van Gogh and Gauguin were all inspired by some aspect of Ukiyo-e prints, whether it’s the perspective, the flatness or the motif.

Breitner, who was acquainted with Japonism during his visit to Paris in 1882, and then again in 1892 he visited the exhibition of Japanese art in the Hague, used a more obvious motif taken from the Japanese art: on more than a dozen canvases in this series he explored the kimono, something that all the ladies in the Ukiyo-e prints are seen wearing. The folds and the shimmer of the silk, the vibrant colours and wild prints all made the kimono an eye-catching and interesting motif to paint. Whistler painted his models in loose kimono-style garments and Monet bought a kimono for his young wife and painted her wearing it in 1876. After the wave of Japonism madness swept him too, Breitner bought a few folding screens and a few pretty kimonos. Now he only needed a delicate flower for a model to wear them and pose for him, and Geesje was in the right place at the right time.

George Hendrik Breitner Girl in Red Kimono Geesje Kwak, 1894

Geesje Kwak. Study for ‘The red kimono’, Photo by Breitner, 1893

George Hendrik Breitner, Sketch for ‘The red kimono’, 1893-95, picture found here.

Little is known about Geesje and we can assume that this mysterious girl would have been forgotten by history if she wasn’t posing for Breitner. She was born as Gezina Kwak in Zaandam on 17 April 1877 and moved to Amsterdam in 1893. She worked either as a seamstress or as a salesgirl in a hat shop. In a right place at a right time, Geesje moved to the street where Breitner’s studio was and soon started modelling for him regularly. Their relationship was strictly professional and Breitner noted down in his notebook the precise hours and duration of her sittings. Before Breitner’s Japanese phase, his passion was the portrayal of the underbelly, the poor and the miserable, and the fact that Geesje was a simple, working class girl appealed to his sense of social awareness. Geesje’s sister Anna also posed for Breitner and you can see her in resplendent red kimono down bellow, but Geesje was the main model.

Geesje would walk around the studio, as in a zen garden, or lounged on the divan, sit in front of the mirror, and Breitner sketched her and even photographed her. It’s a good thing he did because in 1895 Geesje and her sister moved to South Africa where Geesje died in 1899 from tuberculosis at the age of twenty-two. Beauty tinged with sadness is how I see all the gorgeous paintings. The blossoms of spring, cherry, plum or apple blossoms, are delicate and ephemeral, better gaze at them before they vanish, better paint them before they wither. And I feel the same could be said about Geesje, looking at her life in retrospective; it’s a great thing that Breitner painted her while she was alive and captured her delicate beauty in those gorgeous kimono.

George Hendrik Breitner, Girl in Red Kimono in Front of a Mirror, 1894

George Hendrik Breitner, Girl in a White Kimono, c 1894-95

George Hendrik Breitner, Anna (Girl in a Red Kimono), 1894

George Hendrik Breitner, Girl in a white kimono (Geesje Kwak), 1893

George Hendrik Breitner, Girl in Red Kimono (Geesje Kwak), 1895−1896

George Hendrik Breitner, Girl in a White Kimono, 1894

Souvenir of Velázquez: John Everett Millais, James Jebusa Shannon and Joaquín Sorolla

Today let’s take a look at three gorgeous portraits of little girls by John Everett Millais, James Jebusa Shannon and Joaquín Sorolla inspired by the paintings of Diego Velázquez’s, mainly the painting “Las Meninas” from 1656 but also some of his other portraits of Infanta Maria Teresa.

John Everett Millais, Souvenir of Velázquez, 1868

Just like Infanta Margaret Theresa from Velázquez’s painting “Las Meninas” (1656), the girl in Millais’ painting is a serious young lady. Two centuries divide the lives of these two moody girls, yet I am sure they would understand each other and could gleefully spend many idle hours giggling and chatting. Millais’ sweet, round faced girl has a pale skin and masses of strawberry blonde hair that are a stark contrast to the darkness of the background. Unlike Infanta Margaret Theresa, this girl is all alone on the canvas. Her face looks like many other from Millais’ canvases, yet her attire is noticeably different from that of any other Victorian girl. This was Millais’ homage to a very famous Baroque painting made by Diego Velázquez, the court painter of Philip IV, in 1656. But Millais used a Pre-Raphaelite colour palette and the brush strokes on the hair and details of the dress are particularly loose, unrestrained and confident. Millais was apparently so skillful a painter that he was able to paint a leaf in a few brushstrokes and achieve the liveliness and accuracy. I think these strokes are a proof of that.

Diego Velázquez, Las Meninas, 1656, detail

Velázquez’s position as a court painter clearly placed him in a subservient position to the members of the royal family. In his time, he was just a painter and they were the grand and powerful Habsburgs and yet, looking back in time, it is Velázquez who is famous and praised now for his art and little Infanta is just one in a row of royal princesses who would scarcely be remembered today if she wasn’t captured on canvas so many times and in such beautiful and memorable paintings. It is a good thing that Velázquez painted so many beautiful portraits of her as a child because those were her glory days in a way; she married at the age of fifteen to Leopold I, and she was both his niece and his first cousin, and died at the age of twenty-one, after giving birth to four children and being pregnant with the fifth. So, if it wasn’t for these glorious portraits and especially the very much loved and enigmatic “Las Meninas” where she is the central figure, she would have been forgotten in history, she would have been just another pale sickly girl who died very young from this illness or another, childbirth or smallpox, nothing special. But because of art, she is eternal. Even now, four centuries later, she is the blue eyed girl looking back at us, with her hair combed on the side and adorned with a bow, in her wide dress, so large for her small fragile body.

Diego Velázquez, Portrait of Infanta Margarita Teresa in silver dress, 1656

James Jebusa Shannon, Portrait of a Little Girl Holding a Toy (Kitty in a fancy dress), 1895

Next example is James Jebusa Shannon’s lovely portrait of his daughter Katherine Marjorie known as Kitty who was eight years old at the time this was painted. The portrait is beautifully cropped and focuses on the little girl in the moment of childlike playfulness; she is holding a doll in each hand. Still in the world of dreams and make-beliefs, her dolls are her friends. Loose brushstrokes and a colour palette of subtle colours such as white and grey, with touches of pink and red perfectly fit the at once playful and dreamy mood of the painting. Maybe Kitty is lost in the dreamland playing with her dolls and she can scarcely notice that her father is painting her once again, for she was his dear model, but her cheeks are rosy and she is smiling and we can tell she is a happier girl than Velázquez’s Infanta Margaret Theresa was in her constricted dress and constricting environment of the Spanish court. The dress Kitty is wearing resembles the one Velázquez painted, but it is only a fancy dress and life is still a game for Kitty as well.

Joaquín Sorolla, María Figuero dressed as a menina, 1901

And the last example I will be talking about in this post is an unfinished work by a Spanish painter Joaquín Sorolla which shows a girl dressed in an attire of the Infanta Margaret Theresa and the kind of dress that would be worn by other noble girls at the court. Just like Kitty in the previous picture, María was eight years old when this was painted and she was not just any child; she was the daughter of Sorolla’s friend Rodrigo de Figueroa y Torres, Marquis of Gauna and later a Duke of Tovar also. Inspiration for this painting was not Velázquez himself, but his pupil Juan Bautista Martínez del Mazo’s portrait of Infanta Margaret Theresa in a pink dress from 1660. Just like in the portrait of Infanta, María Figuero is wearing a very wide dress which fills the canvas horizontally, the sleeves are equally puffy and there is a pink decoration on the bodice. Her hair also resembles the hairstyle Infanta Margarita wore in some of her other portraits, for example the portrait in blue by Velázquez painted in 1659.

Juan Bautista del Mazo, Infanta Margarita Teresa in a Pink Dress, 1660

Edvard Munch – The Lonely Ones (Two People)

In this post we’ll take a look at Edvard Munch’s painting “The Lonely Ones”.

Edvard Munch, The Lonely Ones (Two People), 1895

A man and a woman are standing on the shore, gazing at the sea. The waves crush on to the shore as the two of them stand there in silence, just one step away from each other, and yet emotionally distant. The whiteness of her dress stands in contrast with his sombre black suit, which visually further connects the insurmountable difference between the sexes. The murmur of the sea, louder than their loneliness, matches the turmoil that rises in their soul. Are they a couple who just had an argument, or two lovers who have, after being drunken with love, now sobered and realised that nothing, not even their love, will spare them the loneliness and feeling of isolation that they experience as individuals, that they are forced to face the world alone, that one is alone even when they are holding a loved one in their arms?

Turquoise and pink rocks on the beach and the sea waves take on psychedelic shapes as Munch swirls with his brush just as he did in the famous “Scream”. As hopes crush into bitter disappointments, the reality fails to make sense and the man and the woman gaze longingly at the sea searching answers to their inner voids. In his book about Munch, J.P. Hodin writes: “It is as if Schopenhauer’s Metaphysics of Sexual Love were represented in the medium of painting. Man and woman are like elements which come into contact, obsess one another but cannot become united. Woman is an enigma to man, a sphinx which he must always contemplate searchingly.”

Still, that disconnection, this misunderstanding between man and a woman alone on the shore reminds me more of something that Erich Fromm wrote in The Art of Loving: “Man is gifted with reason; he is life being aware of itself he has awareness of himself, of his fellow man, of his past, and of the possibilities of his future. This awareness of himself as a separate entity, the awareness of his own short life span, of the fact that without his will he is born and against his will he dies, that he will die before those whom he loves, or they before him, the awareness of his aloneness and separateness, of his helplessness before the forces of nature and of society, all this makes his separate, disunited existence an unbearable prison. He would become insane could he not liberate himself from this prison and reach out, unite himself in some form or other with men, with the world outside.”

Edvard Munch, Separation II, 1896

In “Separation” above we again see a man and a woman, together on canvas yet painfully and deeply alone, drifting into opposite directions, aimlessly like paper boats on the lake. His dark eyelids are closed, his mouth mute. Her long hair seems to be flying in the wind, caressing his shoulder, stirring the silence with its murmur, mingling with the sweet nocturnal air. The striking titles of many of Munch’s paintings point at his desire to portray the whole range of different emotions and states: separation, loneliness, fear, anguish, consolation, pain…

Connecting love with pain, and ultimately loneliness, is a theme often exploited in the world of art and poetry, but Edvard Munch and his contemporaries in the decadent and spiritually rotting society of fin de siècle had a particular penchant for it, to the point of rejecting love or a lover. In his youth, Munch was shy and reticent, not much is known about his relationships with women apart from the fact that they brought bitter disappointments, and he tended to fear any signs of affection or closeness because they most certainly carried anguish with them. Holdin again writes: “Love turned into distrust of woman. When Nietzsche spoke of love he saw it as the eternal war, the mortal hatred between the sexes. ‘Man fears woman when he loves, he fears her when he hates.”

Munch was a friend with many writers of the days and he was influenced by their writings and their ideas. Swedish playwright Strindberg was similarly interested in conflicts of love, and in 1897 wrote in his diary: “What is Woman? The enemy of friendship, the inevitable scourge, the necessary evil, the natural temptation, the longed for misfortune, a never ending source of tears, the poor masterpiece of creation in an aspect of dazzling white. Since the first woman contracted with the devil, shall not her daughters do the same? Just as she was created from a crooked rib, so is her entire nature crooked and warped and inclined to evil.”

Edvard Munch, Consolation, 1894

Holdin ends his thoughts about the paintings “The Lonely Ones” with a glimpse of hope: “No, Munch does not hate woman, for he realizes that she has to suffer as he suffers himself.” How splendid of him to console us!