Shore with Red House

Shore with Red House is a delightful artwork by Edvard Munch which dates from 1904, by which time he was developing the signature style for which he is now most famous. The painting is just one of thousands of items from his career that can be found at the Munch Museum in Oslo.

In the foreground you will see some beautifully crafted stones and pebbles which bring colour and light to this part of the composition. The perspective ensures that the beach side nearest us covers most of the scene, with the buildings at the back being relatively small in comparison. Although working within an Expressionist style, these basic laws of art were followed by Munch. It was more so in colour and form that would be tweaked and adapted by this Norwegian painter. There is a long red bridge in the background, along with a plethora of trees and a dark red building nearest to us. Some grass lines the side of the beach, leading down to the stone beach on which he works. Several larger boulders are partially covered by the sea which laps patiently at the shore side.

The overall atmostphere is one of calm, capturing the quietness and remote nature of this nation's landscape. This provided Munch with the opportunity to distract himself from his own inner turmoil which resulted from tragedy during his childhood. The artist uses different colours to construct elements within the scene, including tones of pink on the water surface, which is reflecting light tones from the sky above and also serves to increase the aesthetic quality of the piece. The location of this scene was in Åsgårdstrand, where Munch produced many paintings. He also wrote in his diaries about how much he enjoyed living and working here, regularly focusing on the landscape of this region. He eventually would purchase his own summer house here, a common thing for Norwegians, having hired several different ones many decades earlier.

The palette used here is fairly interesting, with a good blend of different tones that you might not always find together within Munch's career. There are the blue tones with pink and purple that he regularly used to form skies and water, but they are also accompanied by more autumnal tones such as reds and yellows which would not normally be seen together. The overall result is a rich and charming piece which demonstrates the artist's love of the landscape around him and also offers an insight into the growing qualities of the Expressionist movement more generally, of which he was clearly a major figure. There is also enough information within this painting to locate the precise spot from which it was created, particularly for those who live locally.