Explore the Interpretation of this artwork.
Ulrich Bischoff suggests that—unlike Munch's earlier 1884 portrait of the then 14-year-old Inger in her black confirmation dress, a youthful work in the tradition of portraiture of the 19th century—Inger on the beach shows the future importance of the artist. Munch displays in this work his artistic repertoire for expressing loneliness, melancholy and angst, and foreshadows the compositional breakdown in horizontal and vertical axes of the later Frieze of Life.For Reinhold Heller the painting conveys less a time of day than a mood, created by the contours and dimensional representations of figure and stones, the nonexistent horizon between sky and sea, and the almost monochrome blue.
Anni Carlsson describes the work as a "character landscape" in which the beach, sea and figure are incorporated into a mood and the boundaries cancel space.
In a later statement, Munch compared seaside rocks with living creatures, goblins and sea spirits: "In the night's light which forms have fantastic tones". Nicolay Stang compares the "simplification of form and color, which is a colored form against the other" to Paul Gauguin, a painter whose work was familiar to Munch before 1889.Tone Skedsmo says Inger on the beach is in the tradition of the naturalistic painters of the "Fleksum colony", namely Christian Skredsvig, Eilif Peterssen, Erik Werenskiold, Gerhard Munthe, Kitty Kielland and Harriet Backer, who were known for their quiet summer night moods. While the composition of a figure in a landscape and the elegiac mood are typical of the work of Munch's Norwegian colleagues, Munch's simplification of forms to express a mood adds elements of modernity. He may have been influenced by Puvis de Chavannes and Jules Bastien-Lepage, whom he had met at the Exposition Universelle d'Anvers (1885), in the rigid countenance of Ingers with her blank stare and the dry handling of the paint.
confirmation Puvis de Chavannes Gerhard Munthe Harriet Backer Kitty Kielland Exposition Universelle d'Anvers (1885) Norwegian Erik Werenskiold Christian Skredsvig Jules Bastien-Lepage Eilif Peterssen