Summer Night, Inger on the Beach

Every Tuesday and Sunday in March we will feature a piece from Europeana, a multilingual online collection of millions of digitized items from European museums. Each work we show with our collaboration with Europeana, whether it’s an instantly recognisable masterpiece or a little-known but unforgettable treasure, was shared by a European country as part of the Europeana 280 campaign. The campaign celebrates Europe’s shared art heritage by exploring the diverse and magnificent artworks that have contributed to it. If you’d like to learn more about Europeana 280, follow #Europeana280 on social media.

At the 1889 autumn exhibition in Kristiania (today's Oslo), Edvard Munch was represented by two paintings. One of them bore the title Evening, but was later known as Summernatt or Inger on the Beach. (Inger, the artist's youngest sister, was the model for this work.) The painting's initial reception was very negative. Critics were especially upset about the use of color and character representation, and it was claimed that the exhibition jury made "fun of [the] audience" by including Munch in the exhibit at all! As an expression of sympathy and with the desire to support the young and gifted but controversial artist, Erik Werenskiold, a Norwegian painter and colleague of Munch, bought the painting. Werenskiold's appreciation was foresighted: In many ways, this work stands as the image in which Munch bid a final farewell to realistic painting, and began a new phase in his oeuvre.