Inger in a White Blouse

In 1891 Edvard Munch was on his third state grant, spending the early months of the year in Nice and the spring in Paris. At the end of May he came home by way of Antwerp and spent the summer in Åsgårdstrand, a small resort on the Oslofjord. This canvas is signed and dated that same year, and the model is Inger, the youngest of his sisters, then 23. She had posed for him on the rocks at Åsgårdstrand two summers earlier, and a year later she would stand for him again, dressed in black. Here she is seen at half length in the white blouse of the title, with a road and a house behind her. The painting stayed with Munch and passed to the city of Oslo under the will he made in 1940, which is how it came to the Munch Museum.