The Dance of Life

On a summer night, people have come together to dance on a meadow beside the fjord. The couple in the foreground are pressed together, she in a long red dress with one arm around the shoulder of the man, who is dressed in black. They are flanked by a young woman in a white dress and an older woman in black. Behind them, other couples dance, succinctly captured in sweeping brushstrokes. They convey a sense of speed and rhythm that contrasts with the static poses of the foreground figures. The shoreline, the horizon and the moon reflected in the sea combine to form an atmospheric background.

The Dance of Life was the last of the paintings that Munch added to his Frieze of Life With its depiction of love and the passage of human life, it brings together many of the themes of the Frieze. The relationship between man and woman, loneliness, grief and death were all themes that Munch addressed in both his writings and his pictures during the 1890s. In The Dance of Life, the woman is portrayed at different stages in life and in different moods, from young and hopeful to elderly and careworn. Locked in an embrace, the woman of the central couple is dressed in red, the colour of love. Munch described the painting and its place in the cycle of love in a lyrical text:

The large Frieze the Frieze of Life that he had begun many Years ago -- which would depict the Cycle of Life -- the awakening of Love -- The Dance of Life -- Love at its Peak and its Decline and then Death -- (1908, emunch.no: MM.T.2800).

The Dance of Life was accorded a central place in the Frieze of Life and featured in the major exhibitions where the frieze was presented: in Berlin in 1902, Leipzig in 1903, Kristiania in 1904, and Prague in 1905. In Berlin the picture was included in the second group, under the heading "Love's Flowering and Fall". It featured in all of Munch's friezes, whether realised or merely planned.

Munch painted The Dance of Life after a trip to Florence, where he studied Italian Renaissance painting. Friezes were in vogue at the time, and Renaissance paintings were a frequent source of inspiration. The intense colours in the picture and its use of well-defined colour fields also indicate the influence of Paul Gauguin and syntheticism. The Dance of Life can be seen as the culmination of Munch's symbolist period.

Concerning the picture, Munch wrote to Jens Thiis: "Do You not find a similarity between 'The Dance of Life' and the rhythm and movement in the dance of the past 20 years? In the Frieze of Life on the Whole?" (Draft letter to Jens Thiis, dated 1933-1940, emunch.no: MM N 43). Like Manet, Degas, and Seurat, Munch represented dance around the turn of the century as a cultural phenomenon. Pioneers in modern dance were performing on the stages of Paris and Berlin. In literature, dance occurs as a theme in Henrik Ibsen, Knut Hamsun, and the works of Munch's poet friends Helge Rode, Sigbjørn Obstfelder, and Vilhelm Krag. Munch's first depiction of dance was the painting Ball (1885, Woll 2008, M 115). Concerning his personal relationship to dance, he wrote to the writer Barbra Ring: "... In my pious home, I never learnt to dance and suffered from an unrequited love for dance --" (National Library of Norway, correspondence collection 782, PN 762).

The Dance of Life was donated to the museum by Olaf Schou in 1910. Schou had purchased the painting at Munch's exhibition at the Dioramalokalet that same year and donated it directly to the museum. The picture has two signatures, indicating that Munch began work on it in 1899 and finished it in 1900. Its first appearance in an exhibition was in Dresden in 1900, where it had the title Johannisnacht, the German name for Saint John's Eve, or Midsummer Eve. When shown at the Dioramalokalet in Kristiania in 1904, it had the title Livets dans (The Dance of Life). In the list prepared by the Commeter'sche Kunsthandlung in 1906, the painting appears as No. 44 with the title Tanz des Lebens. Munch later produced several variations on the same composition. Dancing couples feature in the Linde Frieze (1904, Woll 2008, M 614), the Reinhardt Frieze (1906-1907, Woll 2008, M 730), and the Freia Frieze (1922, Woll 2008, M 1414). The Frieze of Life also included *Dans på stranden *(Dance on the Beach) (1899-1900, Woll 2008, M 460), which Munch painted shortly before The Dance of Life. In January 1925, he signed the National Gallery's copyist register in order to copy his own pictures Ashes (The National Museum, NG.M.00809) and The Dance of Life. The later version of The Dance of Life is richer in its colours (1925, Woll 2008, M 1563). Two drawings from 1898--99 (The Munch Museum, MM.T.02392; PE.T.00505) relate to the composition.

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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