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PROPERTY FROM THE OLSEN COLLECTION

1863-1944
INGEBORG BY THE FJORD

measurements
63 by 74.5cm.

alternate measurements
24 3/4 by 29 1/4 in.

Painted circa 1915.

oil on canvas

To be included in the forthcoming Munch Catalogue raisonné being prepared by the Munch-museet, Oslo.

PROVENANCE

Hammerlunds Kunsthandel, Oslo (1948)
Thomas Olsen (acquired by 1953)
Thence by descent to the present owner

EXHIBITED

Sâo Paulo, 11ème Biennale du Musée d'Art Moderne de Sâo Paulo, 1953-54, no. 11
Oslo, Kunstnerforbundet, Munchbilder i privat eie (Munchbilder in Privatbesitz), 1958, no. 37
Kiel, Kunsthalle zu Kiel, Edvard Munch. Gemälde und Zeichnungen aus einer norwegischen Privatsammlung, 1979, no. 17, illustrated in the catalogue
Oslo, Munch-museet, Edvard Munch, og hans modeller, 1912-1943, 1988, no. 64, illustrated in the catalogue

NOTE

In 1910 Munch bought the manor Nedre Ramme in Hvitsten on the west side of the Kristiania Fjord. It was on this estate, where he became Thomas Olsen's neighbour, that he discovered new motifs including the animals of the farm and bathers on the rocks. His pictures from this time show Munch as a colourist, characterised by a lighter, life-affirming attitude marking his recovery from the 1908 breakdown. The vibrant palette of Ingeborg by the Fjord typifies Munch's post-clinic renaissance, while the angular treatment of the female model and the surrounding rocks invoke his interest in Cubist art. His new young love Ingeborg Kaurin lies on the rocks at Hvitsten, a lyrical, colour-drenched nude charged with sensuality. Rendering his model in yellow and pink brushstrokes similar to the colour of the rocks, Munch celebrates what he called 'the perpetual forces of life', his vision of human beings in harmony with nature.

Munch met the seventeen-year-old Ingeborg soon after he moved to Hvitsten in 1910, and she soon became his model. 'With her fresh youthfulness, her natural ways and voluptuous shape, she represented a new type of woman in Munch's art. She was neither the dangerous woman, nor the embodiment of innocence typically found in Munch's art of the 1890s. Ingeborg Kaurin is depicted as a living creature of flesh and blood' (Iris Müller-Westermann, Munch by Himself (exhibition catalogue), Royal Academy of Arts, London, 2005, p. 124).