On the Veranda

On the Veranda is an example of Munch's use of vivid colour after the turn of the century. It shows the view from the artist's veranda in Åsgårdstrand. Two young girls look out over the landscape and the fjord. An earlier title *På verandaen. Høst. Aasgaardstrand * (On the Veranda. Autumn. Aasgaardstrand) identified both the place and the season.

Vertical streaks against the sky indicate that it is raining, as do the reflections in the water that has settled on the veranda. Munch has painted the scene in autumnal colours, rusty reds and yellows against the green of the grass. This is one of Munch's many representations of children and young people at Åsgårdstrand, which began with *The Girls on the Bridge * (The National Museum, NG.M.00844), painted the previous year. In a number of pictures painted during the summers of 1901 and 1902 he used local residents as models. The two girls have been identified as Henriette Marthe Gjermundsen and a friend. Henriette and her sister were neighbours of Munch in Åsgårdstrand ( (Flaatten, 2013, 181).

The painting was shown for the first time at the Salon des Artistes Indépendants in Paris in 1903, where it had the title La Pluie (Rainy Weather). Many years later, when Henri Matisse sent greetings to Munch on the occasion of his 70th birthday, he praised him for his sense of colour: "I salute the great Norwegian artist (...) He was one of the first at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris to give colour a new expression in canvases of rare harmony" (*Tidens Tegn, *12 December 1933).

*On the Veranda *was purchased for the National Gallery with financial support from the A.C. Houen fund in 1909 from that year's exhibition at Blomqvist. The painting is unsigned and has no date marking, but has been dated to autumn 1902. Other paintings by Munch featuring the same girls working in the garden in Åsgårdstrand appear to support the attribution (Woll 2008, M 546; M 548; M 580). This is the last picture Munch painted at Åsgårdstrand that year and the last before the drama with Tulla Larsen on 11 September, which ended with him shooting himself in the finger.

Wenche Volle

The text was first published in Edvard Munch in the National Museum. A comprehensive overview (Oslo: National Museum, 2022).

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