Street Lafayette by Edvard Munch

Adoptant a spectacular and plunging point of view inspired by impressionism, this urban composition captures the animation of a large city thoroughfare during a sunny day. The painter structures the space with remarkable boldness, translating the dynamism of modernity under the sharp gaze of the famous creator Edvard Munch. This luminous realization, which is entitled “Street Lafayette”, invites the viewer to share the contemplation of a silhouette overlooking the distant crowd.

A man wearing a black top hat and dressed in a dark green frock coat stands on a balcony, leaning forward against the metal railing. Seen in profile on the right, he observes the street below which stretches in a spectacular oblique perspective bordered by large Haussmannian buildings of an ocre yellow hue. The wrought-iron railing with sinuous patterns crosses the canvas diagonally, creating a strong graphic barrier in the foreground. At the bottom, tiny silhouettes of passers-by and carriages blur into fragmented pictorial strokes, the whole bathed in a brilliant solar clarity that makes the atmosphere vibrate.

The artist’s technical virtuosity is fully expressed in this divisionist treatment of light and the vibrations of urban dust. His mastery of oil painting offers a textured rendering of great freshness, confirming the quality of his modern pictorial technique.