Inger in Sunshine

Inger in Sunshine of 1888, now in the Art Museums of Bergen, depicts Munch's youngest sister Inger in outdoor summer light at Åsgårdstrand, and is one of the warmest and least psychologically troubled images in his output from this year. Inger Munch was the sibling who survived longest into the twentieth century, outliving Edvard himself, and their relationship sustained some of his most affectionate portraiture. The Bergen work shows her in the full summer light that he was exploring with new chromatic confidence after his Paris exposure to Impressionist colour theory and technique.

The outdoor light floods the composition with warm, diffuse illumination that casts soft rather than sharp shadows on the figure, handled in broken warm-cool contrasts across the dress and face. Munch achieves a sense of radiant summer without the dry academic finish of his earlier portrait work, the paint surface more alive and atmospherically immediate.