Jonas Lie with his Family

Edvard Munch's 'Jonas Lie with his Family' (1902) depicts the Norwegian author Jonas Lie (1833-1908) — one of the most important Norwegian novelists of the nineteenth century, his realistic novels of Norwegian life having earned him international recognition. Munch's portrait of Lie with his family created a document of the Norwegian literary world with which Munch was deeply connected. His group portrait of the author and family extended his portrait practice to the multi-figure domestic group.

Munch renders the Lie family group with his characteristic figure observation — each family member individualized within the group composition, the specific character and bearing of the Norwegian literary patriarch and his family captured with his direct observational approach. His handling of the domestic setting and the quality of the light on the family group creates the specific atmosphere of the comfortable Norwegian bourgeois domestic world.