Two Human Beings. The Lonely Ones (1906-08)

Munch's 'Two Human Beings: The Lonely Ones' existed in multiple versions across the painter's career, with the first version dating to 1891-92. This 1900-period canvas from the Busch-Reisinger Museum depicts a man and woman standing side by side on a shore, close in proximity yet profoundly isolated from each other — one of Munch's most persistent images of the existential loneliness at the heart of intimate relationships. The couple who cannot bridge the distance between them was for Munch a universal human condition. The work's Harvard location reflects the significant American collecting of Munch that began in the early twentieth century.

Munch places the two figures in the foreground, the sea behind them providing a vast, horizontal emotional backdrop. Their backs are turned to the viewer, creating identification with their isolation rather than observation of it. The colour of sea, sky, and figures is handled in broad, simplified passages that give the image its monumental, archetypal quality.