The Girl by the Window

Edvard Munch · 1893

Medium

Oil on canvas

Original size

96.5 × 65.4 cm (38 × 25 3/4 in.); Framed: 110.5 × 79.4 × 8.9 cm (43 1/2 × 31 1/4 × 3 1/2 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Symbolism

Painted in the same year as The Scream, this quieter, more intimate work reveals a side of Munch often overshadowed by his most iconic image — a young woman silhouetted against pale light, caught in a moment of private contemplation. Munch was deeply preoccupied in the early 1890s with themes of longing, isolation, and the interior life, and The Girl by the Window distils those concerns into something almost tender. Where his expressionist works pulse with anxiety, here the mood is hushed — the figure absorbed in her own world, the window acting as both boundary and threshold between inner feeling and the world outside. His handling of light is characteristically subtle, using tonal contrast to draw the eye inward rather than outward. The painting belongs to a broader series of works Munch made during this period exploring the emotional lives of women, works that were quietly radical in how seriously they took their subjects' inner states. The Art Institute of Chicago holds the original, where it has been studied for its restrained emotional power and technical refinement. Our hand-painted oil reproduction is made on quality canvas using professional-grade oil paints, faithfully matching the original's palette, composition, and the soft, contemplative atmosphere that makes this painting so quietly affecting.