Edvard Munch

Marlborough Fine Art, London

Marlborough Galerie, Zurich

Private collection, Japan

Acquired from the above by the present owner

Marlborough Fine Art, London, 1969, Edward Munch - Emil Nolde. The relationship of their art, cat. no. 64;

Galerie Thomas, Munich, 2012-13, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner/Edvard Munch, pp. 42 and 128.

Schiefler 125; Woll 117

Richard Field, writing in the catalogue of the landmark exhibition The Artistic Revival of the Woodcut in France, 1850 -1900 (University of Michigan, 1984), draws particular attention to this very rare woodcut by Munch. This work “signals the crisis of the woodcut at the end of the century”. It was at this point that both Munch and Gauguin, apparently totally independently of each other, abandoned the pictorial aspects of the woodcut as practised by Vallotton and others. They not only abandoned the complexities of colour printing, they used the natural characteristics and sculptural qualities of the single block, in particular the use of the grain of the wood. When the painting of this subject was exhibited in Paris in 1896, Strindberg was captivated by the moon, writing in La Revue Blanche “Like the dot of an i, the moon rises to suggest an infinite sadness and desolation”.

Jonathan Pascoe Pratt PhD.