Four Stages of Life

Four Stages of Life of 1902 at the Art Museums of Bergen is an allegorical subject engaging with the classical theme of the ages of human existence — childhood, youth, maturity, and old age depicted as successive stages in the life cycle's inevitable progression. Munch's treatment of this traditional subject filtered it through the psychological intensity and Symbolist visual language that gave all his symbolic subjects their distinctive character — the life stages less the conventional tableau of ages than a meditation on the temporal structure of existence, each stage carrying the knowledge of those that preceded it and the shadow of those to come. Bergen's Art Museums hold this alongside his major early works like Inger on the Beach (1889) in a collection that documents his development from Naturalism to Symbolism across the critical decade of the 1880s and 1890s. The allegorical subject demonstrates that by 1902 his symbolic ambitions had expanded beyond the personal psychological subjects of the Frieze of Life toward more universal treatments of human temporal experience.

Munch renders the four stages of life with the bold simplification and psychological directness of his symbolic compositions — the figures representing each stage depicted with the archetypal quality he sought in his allegorical subjects. His handling of the compositional organization — how the different ages relate to each other spatially and psychologically — creates the allegory's visual structure. His palette and handling give each stage its appropriate emotional character within the overall composition.