On the Sofa

In 1913 Munch was well off enough to keep more than one home. He had his house at Hvitsten on the Oslofjord, and that year he also rented Grimsrød, an old farm on the island of Jeløya near the town of Moss, and he moved back and forth between them with his canvases. Moving with him was Ingeborg Kaurin, a young woman of about 19 who kept house for him and sat as his model from 1911 until January 1915, when she married the painter Søren Onsager. Here she lies full length on a green sofa in a red dress, her head propped against the curved back, her dark-stockinged feet reaching the right edge of a long, low canvas 150 centimetres wide. The Munch Museum ties pictures like this to the everyday moments he watched in the house with her. In the same year he made a watercolour of the same subject, On the Couch.