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Information about the astronomical analysis of three paintings by Edvard Munch, including Starry Night, The Storm, and Sunrise in Åsgårdstrand. The analysis aims to determine the precise days when Munch visited Åsgårdstrand and identify the celestial objects in his paintings. The document also discusses conflicting titles for Starry Night and the existence of a red shed in the painting.
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Thesis Supervisor:
Donald W. Olson, Ph.D. Department of Physics
Second Reader:
Heather C. Galloway, Ph.D. Department of Physics
Approved:
Heather C. Galloway, Ph.D. Director of the University Honors Program
Presented to the Honors Committee of Texas State University-San Marcos in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements
for Graduation in the University Honors Program
by Ava Glenn Pope
San Marcos, Texas May 2010
spectacular works depicting the skies of Norway. Our Texas State group used
because the precise days when Munch visited Åsgårdstrand are unknown. Our research group traveled to Norway in August 2008 to find the locations from which Munch painted these three works. We then used astronomical calculations, topographical analyses, historical photographs, and weather records to determine the precise dates and times for the scenes depicted in these paintings.
Professor Donald Olson’s Texas State University group has long had an interest in the way Edvard Munch portrayed the sky. He linked the blood-red sky of The Scream to the cloud of volcanic aerosols and other debris that spread worldwide following the eruption of Krakatoa. As part of his research, the group traveled to Norway and found the exact location depicted in The Scream. They verified that the artist was facing to the southwest, exactly the direction where the Krakatoa twilights appeared when at their most spectacular during the winter following the eruption.^1
On that same trip Dr. Olson’s group found the site of Munch’s Girls on the Pier in Åsgårdstrand. They determined the artist’s direction of view and showed that the yellow disk in the sky of this painting was setting in the southwest and therefore must be a summer full Moon – not the Sun, as some had claimed.^2
As a starting point for a similar analysis of the Getty Center’s Starry Night (Fig. 1), we consulted biographies of Munch, exhibition catalogues, and a detailed year-by-year Munch chronology, which date this painting to 1893.3,4^ We were intrigued to see that the list of 1893 works includes two other Åsgårdstrand paintings with astronomical content. In The Storm (Fig. 2), a bright star shines in the stormy twilight sky above Åsgårdstrand’s
Figure 1: Edvard Munch, Starry Night , 1893 oil on canvas, 135.6 x 140 cm The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles © 2009 The Munch Museum / The Munch‐Ellingsen Group / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Figure 2: Edvard Munch, The Storm , 1893 oil on canvas, 92 x 131 cm Museum of Modern Art, New York © 2009 The Munch Museum / The Munch‐Ellingsen Group / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
We checked two of the most detailed chronologies of Munch’s life, and neither of these makes any mention of a visit to Åsgårdstrand in 1893.5,
Author Ketil Bjørnstad goes further and explicitly states for the year 1893 that Munch was not on the scene in Åsgårdstrand: During the summer Munch does not go to Åsgårdstrand. Instead, he remains in Germany, paints landscapes with deeply atmospheric, smouldering colour, paints Starry Night , Moonlight and The Storm. 7
A recent biography by Sue Prideaux discusses Munch’s stay in Germany in 1893 and likewise concludes:
Summer came, and Munch had neither the money nor the inclination to go to Norway.^8
But these biographies and chronologies are incomplete. Our research turned up a first- person account that was apparently overlooked by these authors. Jens Thiis, a long-time director of the National Gallery in Oslo, visited Åsgårdstrand in 1893 with several friends, including Edvard Munch and the poet Helge Rode. Thiis wrote:
I happened to meet Helge again in Åsgårdstrand. It was his friend Edvard Munch who had invited him there…One day in August, when we were sitting together on the hotel veranda, I had the desire to sketch Helge Rode…. 9
This drawing, seen in Fig. 4, bears the date of August 17, 1893, handwritten by Thiis in the corner.
Figure 4: Sketch of Helge Rode, by Jens Thiis, 17 August 1893
Figure 5: Detail of upper right corner of Thiis’ Sketch, “Åsgårdstrand, 17.8.93. J.T.”
Because this account definitely places Munch in Åsgårdstrand, where he could be inspired by the Norwegian skies, we realized that we could possibly identify the celestial objects in Munch’s paintings and determine dates for these works.
In the articles and books that we consulted, the art historians who comment on the sky of Starry Night all agree that Munch included the planet Venus.
The Getty sponsored a book devoted entirely to an analysis of Starry Night. The author, art historian Louise Lippincott, asserts that:
The pink “star” on the horizon in Starry Night is actually the planet Venus…. 10
Lippincott also refers to the “appearance of Venus” in the painting as “the red star on its horizon.” 10
Figure 6: Starry Night, 1893
Regarding the “small red house” seen inside the silhouette of the trees, Lippincott asserts that
Åsgårdstrand’s topography does not explain Starry Nigh t’s most enigmatic element, however: the small red house standing near the great lindens, to the right of the streak of moonlight. No such building seems ever to have existed at the foot of the Kiosterudgarden or anywhere in its immediate vicinity. Nor is it clear in the painting exactly where the house is situated. Is it in front of the trees, or does one glimpse it through the foliage? 14
To check these planetary, lunar, and topographical identifications, we wanted to carry out our own astronomical analysis.
TRIP TO NORWAY
Accordingly, our Texas State group traveled to Åsgårdstrand during August 2008. For Starry Night and also for The Storm and Sunrise in Åsgårdstrand , we hoped to answer several questions: Where was Munch standing? Which way was he was facing and therefore which part of the sky did he depict? Could we determine the dates and times? Could we identify the celestial objects in these works?
Figure 7 : Contrast‐enhanced image of Starry Night ; a small red roofed building may be seen through the linden trees.
We began by making a topographic survey of the town, using surveyor’s chains and transit to measure distances and angles.
Next, Åsgårdstrand resident Knut Christian Henriksen kindly shared his immense local history collection, including hundreds of photographs showing Åsgårdstrand as it appeared in Munch’s time.
Figure 10: Don Olson, Knut Henriksen, and Ava Pope standing in front of Knut’s shop, Fru Fadum
Figure 9: Ava Pope and Joe Herbert determining exact position of tree in The Storm
Figure 8: Ava Pope, Joe Herbert, and Donald Olson surveying scenes of Starry Night and The Storm
We allowed for this in our calculations, using a 3-dimensional computer model to simulate placing Munch on the veranda, on the balcony, and in the windows of the original hotel. We found that we could reproduce the view of Starry Night only from near the center of the upper floor of the old hotel.
Louise Lippincott argues that Starry Night ’ s vertical white column with the round dot on the top is “the moon and its reflection seen through the trees.”^15 With assistance from Knut Christian Henriksen’s resources, we can offer a different explanation.
It is true that Munch depicted summer full Moons and their glitter paths in the fjord in dozens of other works. But glitter paths are reflections in the water and cannot extend up higher than the horizon. In Munch’s other works showing glitter paths, the columns of light stop at the horizon. The vertical white column in Starry Night extends well above the horizon and cannot be a glitter path.
More than twenty historical photographs, taken from almost all possible directions, show a flagpole with a round ball at the top standing in the Kiøsterud garden. The flagpole no longer exists, but our computer model shows that it stood exactly where Munch painted it and had the correct height (about 45 feet) relative to the group of linden trees.
Figure 13: Detail of “Moon” in Starry Night
Figure 12: Example of Munch’s glitter paths (note that the light from the reflection of the moon clearly ends where the water meets the horizon)
We discovered a depression in the grass where the flagpole’s base had been. The depression can be found by starting at the corner of the white fence, walking uphill 20 feet along the fence that runs directly away from the water, and then walking 37 feet into the garden directly away from that fence.^16
The hypothetical “Moon” and reflection in Starry Night turns out to be a flagpole.
The Red Shed
To resolve the dilemma posed by Lippincott regarding the existence of a red shed near the large group of linden trees in Munch’s painting we looked at many vintage Åsgårdstrand photographs provided by Knut Henriksen. A small shed outside the garden fence, in exactly the position to be glimpsed through the trees from Munch’s location in
Figures 14 & 15: Historical photographs from Munch’s time. The flagpole stands in the yard of the Kiøsterud House just as it appears in Starry Night
Figure 16: Ava Pope, Bob Newton, and Joseph Herbert standing in the Kiøsterud yard at the location of the base of the flagpole
During our visit to Åsgårdstrand we took photographs from the hotel by day, during evening and morning twilight, and at night. We verified that Munch’s direction of view for Starry Night was generally to the east. The stars on the left side of the painting would lie somewhat north of east, while the trees on the right side are south of east.
Our computer calculations show that Venus was never visible at or above the eastern horizon during morning twilight or at sunrise on any date in the spring or summer of
Therefore Munch could not have seen Venus from the Åsgårdstrand Grand Hotel whether from the front or back of the hotel, whether looking east toward the fjord or west toward the hill behind the hotel, whether at morning or evening twilight, on any date in the spring or summer of 1893.^17
Figure 20: Computer simulation of the sky of Åsgårdstrand in the summer of 1893
But a very bright “star” is clearly visible in Starry Night. What did Munch see? The blue skyglow of Starry Night suggests a Norwegian twilight. Is this morning twilight or evening twilight?
The composition now called Starry Night was exhibited by Edvard Munch in his lifetime with a variety of titles. According to Arne Eggum and other experts at the Munch Museum, the alternate titles used for this work include The Stars , Evening Star , Night , Starry Heavens , and finally Starry Night. 18 We realized that the title Evening Star provides an important astronomical clue, telling us that the bright “star” was observed between sunset and midnight.
But like so much else about Starry Night , even this use of the title Evening Star is hotly disputed by some art historians. Several scholars identify the title Evening Star with a composition now known as The Voice , which shows a woman standing in a forest along the coastline near Åsgårdstrand, with a yellow glitter path of moonlight reflecting in the fjord.
This title dispute is considered especially significant because Evening Star (whatever painting it was) was shown at Berlin in 1902 in the important position as painting #1 in
Figure 21: The Voice, c. 1896, oil on canvas
