Fertility

Fertility of 1902 at the Munch Museum is an allegorical subject presenting the generative forces of nature and human life as a counterbalance to Munch's many images of death, disease, and psychological torment — a celebration of life's creative energy rather than its destructive potential. The fertility theme engaged with the pastoral tradition that placed symbolic significance in the natural world's seasonal reproduction, but Munch's treatment was characteristically personal and direct rather than conventionally allegorical. By 1902 his major symbolic series — the Frieze of Life with its cycle of love, anxiety, fear, and death — had been substantially completed, and the fertility subject offered him the opportunity to affirm life's continuation alongside its inevitable ending. The Munch Museum holds this as part of its comprehensive collection that documents the full range of his production, including the more affirmative symbolic subjects that complicate the dominant narrative of his art as primarily anguished and anxious.

Munch renders the fertility allegory with the bold, simplified handling of his most monumental symbolic subjects — the figures embodying the theme given the archetypal quality he sought in his symbolic compositions. His palette in subjects celebrating life's generative power tends toward warmer, more positive tones than his anxiety subjects. His handling of the figure or figures within the landscape setting creates the environmental context for the symbolic theme.