Morning - Edvard Munch · 1884 · Elliott Best Restored Masters

One bare foot still raised, a young woman pauses halfway through dressing. Her hands rest around her knee as she turns toward the window. Morning light catches the copper in her hair and the folds of her ivory sleeve. On the table, a glass and decanter almost disappear into the brightness. For a moment, getting dressed can wait.

The original painting
Morgen (Morning), also known as Morning, Girl at the Bedside. Oil on canvas, 96.5 × 103.5 cm. Signed and dated at the lower left. Rasmus Meyer Collection, Bergen, Norway. Catalogue raisonné, Woll M 110.

From Modum to the Paris World’s Fair

Munch painted Morning at Modum, Norway, where the artist Frits Thaulow ran an open-air academy for younger painters. Munch chose an interior, but daylight became his subject. You can trace it across the room by the different things it does to glass, linen, hair, and skin. 

When the painting appeared at Norway’s Autumn Exhibition in 1884, one reviewer objected to both the subject and the way Munch had painted it. Five years later, a Norwegian jury chose that same canvas for the 1889 World’s Fair in Paris. Munch himself would have preferred to send a more personal work. By the time this early painting earned international exposure, his ambitions had already moved on.

Bringing the Original Vision Closer to View

For this EB Restoration Signature™ edition, we softened the yellow cast of the source reproduction so the warm ivory bedding and pale blue wall read as distinct colours. Her profile and the folds of her charcoal skirt have slightly more definition in the remaster. We kept the brushwork visible in the sleeve and pillow, where a few loose strokes suggest the way the fabric gathers under her weight.

Curator’s Note

I keep coming back to the thin blue rim of the tray. It’s one of the smallest marks in the room, yet it gives the glassware a place to stand when its edges all but vanish in the light. Follow the girl’s gaze and you arrive at that little stroke of blue. It makes you pause in much the same way she has.