Man in the Cabbage Field - Edvard Munch · 1916 · Elliott Best Restored Masters

A man in a cobalt-blue jacket makes his way through the cabbage rows, his arms full of leaves. One hand curls around a pale stalk. His hat breaks the horizon, and his boots nearly disappear into the greens at our feet. Munch gives us the harvest from a worker’s height. We can see how far the field stretches and feel something of the weight he carries.

The original painting
Mannen i kålåkeren, oil on canvas, 136 × 180 cm. Signed and dated at the lower left. Collection of the National Museum, Oslo. Catalogue raisonné, Woll M 1195. 

A field Munch returned to

The Norwegian artist had already painted a cabbage field in 1915. In 1916, the year he bought Ekely on the outskirts of Oslo, he placed a worker at the centre of this much larger canvas. The subject stayed with him. Almost three decades later, in 1943, he painted The Man in the Cabbage Field again.

Here, the scale matters. The canvas is nearly two metres wide, yet the man fills it from his boots to the crown of his hat. Behind him, whole fields fit into narrow bands of yellow and rust. In front, a single cabbage leaf opens wide enough for us to follow the turn of the brush. 

Bringing the Original Vision Closer to View

For this EB Restoration Signature™ edition, we worked from a digital reproduction, reducing isolated specks in the pale sky while keeping the broken strokes that give the leaves their ragged edges. The yellow field and cobalt jacket read a little brighter in our remaster. We retained the full horizontal composition and the few angular marks beneath the hat brim that describe the worker’s face.

Curator’s Note

Look at the pale lavender cabbage just to the left of his boots. Then look up at the sky above his shoulder. Munch has carried the same unlikely colour from one to the other. Once I saw it, the whole field seemed to open up. Even the lowest leaf catches a little of that sky.