Art Institute of Chicago

The Girl by the Window

Edvard Munch (Norwegian, 1863–1944)

Date

1893

Medium

Oil on canvas

Culture

Norway

Department

Painting and Sculpture of Europe

Institution

Art Institute of Chicago

Standing before a window in the dead of night, a young girl draws back a curtain to gaze at the street from her darkened room. Deep shadows envelop the interior, obscuring all but the suggestion of a rounded piece of furniture at the lower right. The darkness, combined with the sharply tilted floor, gives a sense of precariousness and isolation to the figure. Loosely applied brown, blue, and violet tones enhance the melancholy atmosphere. The window serves as a symbolic barrier, separating the interior from the outside world, but also as a membrane, through which moonlight casts glowing rectangles upon the floor. Although the girl’s actions suggest a narrative, the painting only provides mystery—we cannot see her facial expression, nor what she observes. Girl by the Window belongs to a group of nocturnal scenes painted by Edvard Munch in the early 1890s, all characterized by moody blue tonalities. Around that time he penned a manifesto in which he declared that artists should depict “living people who breathe and feel, suffer and love.” This focus on the psychological realities of human existence found its ultimate expression in Munch’s iconic work The Scream (1893; Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo).

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