Boy In Blue

Edvard Munch's 'Boy in Blue' (1900) is a formal portrait of a young boy — the blue of the costume creating the composition's primary chromatic element and connecting the work to the long tradition of blue-dress child portraiture in European painting (Gainsborough's 'Blue Boy' being the most famous example). Munch's engagement with childhood as a subject was consistent throughout his career, and his portraits of individual children showed a different, more tender aspect of his personality than his anguished psychological subjects.

Munch renders the boy in his blue costume with the directness of his portraiture — the child's specific face and the particular quality of his presence depicted with the observational honesty he brought to all his portrait subjects. The blue of the costume creates the composition's chromatic anchor, and his handling of the color's relationship to the background and to the boy's face creates the portrait's visual character. His palette is characteristically bold, the blue asserting itself with the directness of his mature color handling.