Anxiety

1894

Oil on canvas, 93.5 × 73 cm. MUNCH, Oslo

A row of pale, staring townspeople walks toward the viewer along a fjord road under a red sky. A man in a top hat and a woman in a bonnet lead the group.

The motif moved across media, from this canvas to an 1896 lithograph printed by Clot in black and in red. Painting and printmaking fed each other.
A watercolour and pencil study of the same scene also dates from 1896.
Look at the faces, set side by side like masks and all turned outward.
MUNCH conservator Inger Grimstad found raw canvas under a hand-applied ground, and an original tinted glaze once taken for dirt.
It was recently shown in the museum's Infinite display in Oslo.

Grimstad links this crowd to the Sunday stroll in his earlier painting of Karl Johan. That picture, now at KODE, sets the walkers in town.

Image: Wikimedia Commons · PD-Art