Edvard Munch's summer retreat recreated

Excavations begin on the site of the painter's summer house with a view to recreating Munch's working habitat

Archaeological digs tend to provide insights into what life was like centuries, or sometimes even millennia ago. However, one current dig near the small coastal city of Hvitsten in Southern Norway is reaching just over 100 years back, in an attempt to recreate the summer retreat once owned by Edvard Munch (1863 – 1944), where the artist spent much of his time from 1910 until his death.

Munch's retreat as it was in 1910

Ramme Gaard, the country estate which includes the plot where Munch's property stands, is owned by the shipping magnate and Munch enthusiast, Petter Olsen. The estate plans to restore Munch's home, reconstruct his pier-side studio, and reintroduce the plants and farm animals once kept here, and to mount tours this summer, as part of the 150th anniversary celebrations of Munch's birth.

Items dug from the site of Munch's old retreat

As The Art Newspaper reports, this holistic recreation of Munch's retreat also involves an archaeological-style dig, to determine the exact sites of certain buildings; however, the excavations have thrown up some exhibit worthy items too.
“The pieces, which include paint tubes, roof tiles and garbage, are now being registered. We plan to exhibit the most interesting ones,” Stefan Docksjö, managing director of Ramme Gaard, told the paper.

Munch's old house, as it stands today

While it is always hard to disentangle the artist's inspiration from the influence of his surrounds, we certainly applaud this historic approach to one of the great pioneers of modernism. To discover more, view The Art Newspaper piece, or visit the Munch 150 site. To learn more about the painter, and to browse through his great works, take a look at our fine introduction to his work.

MunchJohn Boulton Smith

Price AUD$16.95 Price CAD$14.95 Price USD$11.95 Price T11.95

Edvard Munch (1863-1944) is the only Scandinavian painter of modern times to have achieved a world reputation. A tragic childhood – his mother died when he was five and a sister when he was thirteen – wounded him deeply, and much of his early work expresses this in its agonized pessimism. In the first half of his career he lived much of his life in Germany, and became one of the fathers of modern German art. After 1900, however, and particularly after his return to Norway in 1909 following a severe nervous breakdown, his subjects tended to become more extrovert and objective, while his palette assumed increasingly brighter colours. The period 1910-20 was a particularly prolific one, in which he painted mural decorations for Oslo University and many other outdoor subjects, but Munch continued working throughout his life and produced some remarkable sefl-portraits shortly before his death.

This introduction to the art of Munch includes forty-eight full-page colour plates, of work from all stages of his career, from the naturalism of the early work, through the symbolic psychological dramas of the 1980s to the brilliant colours of the later works. John Boulton Smith's authoritative essay on Munch has here been revised and updated. The plates are complemented by notes written by art historian James Malpas, discussing each painting in detail, and there is a wealth of black-and-white comparative illustrations. Specifications:

Format: Paperback
Size: 305 × 225 mm (12 × 8 7/8 in)
Pages: 128 pp
Illustrations: 86 illustrations
ISBN: 9780714827322

John Boulton Smith was an acknowledged authority on the art of Scandinavia. His authoritative essay on Munch has here been revised and updated.

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