Cabaret

Cabaret of 1887, at the Munch Museum, places Munch within the Naturalist tradition of depicting popular entertainment venues that was central to French Impressionism and which had Norwegian equivalents in the milieu of Kristiania's artistic bohemia. The cabaret scene — figures at tables, artificial light, the social theatre of a public entertainment space — was one of the key subjects through which late nineteenth-century artists engaged with modern urban life. Munch's encounter with this subject in 1887 precedes his transformative visits to Paris in 1889 and 1890, but it reflects awareness of the urban genre painting exemplified by Manet and Degas through reproductions and works of Norwegian artists who had studied in France.

The artificial interior light of the cabaret setting creates the characteristic combination of warm directed light on near surfaces and deep shadow in the background that defines evening interior painting in this period. Munch applies the paint with more gestural energy than in his more controlled portrait work from the same year, the cabaret's atmosphere of activity and noise finding formal expression in the looser handling.