Summer night. Inger ashore

Edward and Inger Munch (probable photo)

In the summer of 1889, Munk rented a small house in Osgordstrand , a town on the shores of the Oslo Fjord . During the holiday season, Osgordstrand was a resting place for residents of nearby Christiania , among whom were many artists, including Munch's friends - Krog and Taulov ^[1] .

The town has gained importance in the biography of the artist. Munch lived in it several holiday seasons. In 1897, he bought a house here. Osgordstrand has become the site of the creation of many important works of the artist from the cycle " Life Frieze ". In his first summer in the town in 1889, he painted the painting “Summer Night. Inger ashore. " The model for Munch was his younger sister Inger, who repeatedly posed for her brother ^[2] . The creation of the canvas was preceded by a number of artist's studies: in the evening hours from 9 to 11 he studied the lighting conditions of the local summer night ^[1] .

For the first time, a painting entitled “Evening” ^[3] ( Norwegian Aften ) was exhibited at the autumn exhibition of 1889 in Christiania, while the author himself was in Paris, where he came to get acquainted with the latest trends in art; the consequence of this trip was the transition of Munch in creativity from symbolism to expressionism ^[4] . The work was negatively accepted by critics. To support a young colleague, the painting was bought directly from the exhibition by the artist Verenschell ^[5] . In 1909, the canvas was acquired by collector . Since 1924, the painting has been exhibited at the in the city of Bergen ^[4] .

In the right foreground of the picture is a young woman. She sits on a granite rock among large coastal boulders. Her hands are neatly folded in her lap. The head is turned in profile ^{[K 1]} . In her hands she holds a straw hat. The girl’s bright white dress contrasts with mossy green stones and the blue-red surface of the slightly rippling sea, the color of which indicates white nights - a phenomenon observed in the European North in the summer. In the background of the picture behind the figure of a girl in the sea, a number of cages and a boat with figures of fishermen are visible ^[7] .

The art historian Ulrich Bischoff says that, unlike Munch’s early work “Inger in Black” ^[8] - a portrait of 1884, in which the fourteen-year-old younger sister of the author is depicted in a black dress for confirmation in accordance with the traditions of portraiture of the 19th century, in the picture "Summer night. Inger ashore ”noticeable future originality of the artist. In this work, Munch demonstrates an individual set of artistic techniques for expressing loneliness, melancholy, and longing and portends a compositional breakdown in the horizontal and vertical axes of later works from the Life Frieze cycle ^[9] .

According to Reinhold Heller, the canvas to a lesser extent tells about the time of day, but conveys the mood created by the contours and spatial image of the figure and stones, the nonexistent horizon between the sky and the sea and almost monochrome blue ^[1] . The art critic Annie Karlsson defines the work as a “personal landscape” in which the shore, sea and figure are included in the mood and blur the boundaries of space. She compares with living creatures, goblins and water coastal boulders in the picture of Munch: “In the light of night, the form of which takes on fabulous tones” ^[2] . The art critic Nicholas Stang, in “simplifying the form and color [in the picture], which is the opposition of one colored form to another”, sees a resemblance to the manner of Paul Gauguin - an artist whose work was familiar to Munch until 1889 ^[10] .

According to Tone Shedsmo, the painting “Summer Night. Inger on the Shore ”was written by the author under the influence of the works of naturalists from the“ Flexum Colony ”, in particular, , Peterssen , Verenschell , Münte , Hyelland and Bakker , who gained fame by portraying quiet summer nights. If the composition of the figure in the landscape and the elegiac mood are characteristic of the works of Munch’s Norwegian colleagues, then the simplification of forms used by him to indicate the mood are elements of modernity. Perhaps the expressionless features of the pale face of a young woman, her empty gaze Munk depicted under the influence of the works of Puvi de Chavan and Bastien-Lepage , whose work he met at the in 1885 ^[4] .

During the first exposure of the picture at the exhibition in Christiania in the fall of 1889, she received several negative reviews ^[5] . In the weekly ( Morning Magazine ), Munch's work was called "delirium" and was described as misleading to the public. Others accused the author of the fact that “the easily scattered stones seem to be made of soft formless substance” ^[10] . In the Aftenposten newspaper ( Evening Mail ), the image of a seated woman was described as “an individual without traces of life and emotions that does not correspond to reality with her appearance, as well as with color ... All this, it seems to us, has such a low artistic value, that the presence of her [picture] at the exhibition itself is difficult to explain ” ^[11] .

They tried to intercede for the work and the author in the weekly ( Daily Journal ), where they printed: “To understand this, you must always keep in mind that Munk is a poet - a person who can be completely absorbed in her mood [the picture] and surrender to her game, without taking into account the usual laws and forms, often with an aspiration for fantasy ” ^[11] .

• Summer night. Inger on the beach (neopr.) . www.europeana.eu . - Europeana collections. Date of treatment June 14, 2017. (English)
• Inger i svart ( unspecified ) . www.nasjonalmuseet.no . - Nasjonalmuseet Samlingen. Date of treatment June 14, 2017. (Nor.)