Nude in Front of the Mirror

Nude in Front of the Mirror from 1902 belongs to Munch's engagement with the female nude in an interior or domestic setting, a subject that confronted him with the tradition of the mirror nude from Velázquez's Rokeby Venus through Manet's bar mirror reflections and the Viennese Secession's psychologically charged treatment of female self-contemplation. Munch's treatment of the mirror subject carries his characteristic quality of psychological unease: the nude woman before the mirror is simultaneously observed and self-observing, the reflective surface introducing a doubling of identity that resonated with his broader interest in the uncanny in everyday experience. The Munch Museum holds this as one of his significant interior figure works.

Munch renders the nude and her reflection with a tension between the warmth of the figure's flesh and the cool, slightly distorting quality he gives to the mirror's image. The interior setting is kept deliberately simple — a few strokes of background color — focusing the entire composition on the figure's encounter with her own reflection.