Night in Nice

Today's painting is shown to you thanks to The National Museum in Oslo.

This painting depicts the rooftops and hills of Nice as seen from Edvard Munch’s third-floor studio apartment during the winter months of early 1891. The buildings, treetops, and distant hills of the Mediterranean city lie swathed in a soft, blue violet light. The sketch-like brush strokes endow the mild night air with a sense of anticipation and movement.

High viewpoints were used by Impressionists such as Gustave Caillebotte and Claude Monet to bring life to their paintings of bustling urban streets. In Munch’s painting, however, the high viewpoint emphasizes the painter’s physical and psychological alienation from other people. A very few lighted windows below the painter’s vantage point are the only sign that Munch is not alone in the city. The bluish colours accentuate the painting’s melancholy and dreamlike atmosphere. The city is depicted as a place for contemplation and solitude.

Munch had just turned 27 when he travelled alone from Norway to Nice. Officially he was supposed to have been in Paris, studying painting; however, after he contracted rheumatic fever during the journey, he chose to travel instead to Nice due to its milder climate.

Munch had been granted a travel scholarship by the Norwegian government in order to remedy his lack of formal art education. Critics, and other artists, thought Munch needed to learn about the rules of composition, painting technique, and the use of colour - he was considered to be going too much in his own direction. At the same time, he was recognized as often managing to convey a deeper truth and beauty in his work. This is precisely what he achieves in his painting Night in Nice. He succeeds in appealing to the onlooker’s emotions through unconventional means. This painting becomes a means to increase the onlooker’s self-awareness.

Night in Nice was exhibited at the National Annual Autumn Exhibition - the Artists’ Own Exhibition - in 1891 and purchased for the National Gallery in Christiania (Oslo) with the assistance of some older artists who were friends of Munch. Two years later Munch achieved his international breakthrough with a solo exhibition in Berlin, where his painting The Scream was exhibited for the first time.