The Girl by the Window

CC0 Public Domain Designation

1893

Edvard Munch (Norwegian, 1863–1944)

Standing before a window in the dead of night, a young girl draws back a curtain to gaze at the street from her darkened room. Deep shadows envelop the interior, obscuring all but the suggestion of a rounded piece of furniture at the lower right. The darkness, combined with the sharply tilted floor, gives a sense of precariousness and isolation to the figure. Loosely applied brown, blue, and violet tones enhance the melancholy atmosphere. The window serves as a symbolic barrier, separating the interior from the outside world, but also as a membrane, through which moonlight casts glowing rectangles upon the floor. Although the girl’s actions suggest a narrative, the painting only provides mystery—we cannot see her facial expression, nor what she observes.

Girl by the Window belongs to a group of nocturnal scenes painted by Edvard Munch in the early 1890s, all characterized by moody blue tonalities. Around that time he penned a manifesto in which he declared that artists should depict “living people who breathe and feel, suffer and love.” This focus on the psychological realities of human existence found its ultimate expression in Munch’s iconic work The Scream (1893; Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo).

Status: On View, Gallery 245
Department: Painting and Sculpture of Europe

Artist: Edvard Munch
Title: The Girl by the Window
Place: Norway (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: 1893
Medium: Oil on canvas
Inscriptions: Inscribed lower right: E - Munch
Dimensions: 96.5 × 65.4 cm (38 × 25 3/4 in.); Framed: 110.5 × 79.4 × 8.9 cm (43 1/2 × 31 1/4 × 3 1/2 in.)
Credit Line: Searle Family Trust and Goldabelle McComb Finn endowments; Charles H. and Mary F. S. Worcester Collection
Reference Number: 2000.50
IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.: https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/154235/manifest.json

Dr. Relling, “Der Fall Munch,” Die Kunst für Alle 8, no. 7 (1893), p. 102.
Harold Holst Halvorsen, Katalog av Edvard Munchs Kunstverker samlet av Harold Holst Halvorsen, Kunsthandler (Oslo, 1952), p. 4 (ill.).
Paris, Musée d’Orsay, Munch et la France, exh. cat., 1992, fig. 89.
Jan Kneher, Edvard Munch in seinen Ausstellungen zwischen 1892 und 1912: Eine Dokumentation der Ausstellungen und Studie zur Rezeptionsgeschichte von Munchs Kunst (Worms, 1994), pp. 10, 15, 369.
Jay A. Clarke, “Girl Looking out the Window” in Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 30, 1, (2004), pp. 70-71 (color ill.).
Jay A. Clarke, “Munch’s Critical Reception in the 1890s and His ‘Place’ in History” in Seeing and Beyond: Essays on Eighteenth- to Twenty-First-Century Art in Honor of Kermit S. Champa (New York, 2005), pp. 191-92, 199, fig. 3.
Gerd Woll, “Use and Re-Use in Munch’s Earliest Paintings,” Munch Becoming “Munch”: Artistic Startegies 1880-1892, Exh. cat. (Munch Museet, 2008), ill. 84, p. 93-94, p. 97, ill. 98, p. 100, p. 150, p. 179, p. 199, p. 226, cat. 171.
Gerd Woll, Edvard Munch: complete paintings: catalogue raisonné, Vol. 1, (London, 2009), cat. no. 303.
Anne Buschhoff, “Liebe, Angst und Tod in Werken von Edvard Munchs Zeitgenossen-Max Klinger, Odilon Redon, Félicien Rops, Félix Vallotton und andere,” Edvard Munch: Rätsel hinter der Leinwand, ed. Dorothee Hansen, Exh. cat. (DuMont, 2012), p. 74, ill. 75, p. 166, (ill.), p. 221.
James Rondeau, ed., Paintings at the Art Institute of Chicago: Highlights of the collection (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2025), 87 (ill.).
James Rondeau, ed., Highlights of the Art Institute of Chicago (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2026), 141, 261, no. 104, (ill.).

Kristiania (present-day Oslo), Juveler Tostrups Gaard, Edvard Munch’s Maleriudstilling, September 1892, no. 45.
Berlin, Verein Berliner Künstler, Sonder-Ausstellung des Malers Edvard Munch aus Christiania, November 5–19, 1892, no. 23; traveled to Düsseldorf, Eduard Schulte, November 1892; Köln, Eduard Schulte, December 1892; Berlin, Equitable-Palast, December 1892 – January 1893; Copenhagen, Skandinavisk Kunstudstillings Lokaler, February – March 1893; Dresden, Victoriahaus, May 1893.
Lugano, Museo d’Arte Moderna, Edvard Munch, September 19–December 13, 1998, no. 15
Vienna, Graphische Sammlung Albertina “Edvard Munch: Themes and Variations” March 14-June 22, 2003, cat.
84.
Oslo, Munch Museum, “Munch becoming Munch: Artistic Strategies, 1880–1892,” October 8, 2008–January 12, 2009, cat. 171 (ill.).
Art Institute of Chicago, Becoming Edvard Munch: Influence, Anxiety, and Myth, February 14–April 26, 2009, cat. 14 (ill.).
Bremen, Kunsthalle Bremen, Edvard Munch - Mystery behind the Canvas, October 15, 2011-Febiary 26, 2012, no. 21 (ill.).

Arthur von Franquet (died 1931), Braunschweig, from 1893 [acquired directly from the artist; see correspondence in Munch Museum archives, Oslo]; by descent to his nephew Herbert von Franquet, 1931. Sold to Neue Galerie, Vienna, 25 September 1935 [letter from Otto Kallir Nirenstein, Neue Galerie, to Edvard Munch, 26 September 1935, in Munch Museum archives, in which he states that he bought the picture the previous day and it “stammt aus der Sammlung Franquet,” copy in curatorial file]. Harald Hort Halvorsen, Oslo, 1937 [bought in Paris in 1937 according to Halvorsen 1952]; sold by him to Pål Kavli, Oslo, c. 1937; by descent to Kavli’s second wife, Reidun Kavli (died 1996) [see correspondence and notes in curatorial file]; sold to Mr. Allan Andersen, Denmark; Luc Bellier, Paris as agent for Allan Andersen; sold to the Art Institute, 2000.

Woll EM 303

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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