Eifersucht

Munch came back to this scene again and again, painting some 11 versions across 40 years. The wound behind it was old. In the 1890s he belonged to a circle of writers and artists in Berlin who drank at the same tavern, and among them were the Polish writer Stanislaw Przybyszewski and his wife, Dagny Juel, who had been close to Munch. The green face pushed to the front of this canvas is generally taken for Przybyszewski, sick with jealousy, while behind him a woman reaches toward a man in a garden, a couple caught in the old story of temptation. Munch painted this version in 1913, two decades after those Berlin nights, letting the colour carry the feeling: the rival's skin drained to green against the hot reds behind him.