“There is a battle that goes on between men and women. Many people call it love.”
—Edvard MunchThis evocative nude, Die Sünde, sees Munch engage with the common fin-de-siècle theme of woman as temptress, seducer, and betrayer of men: the femme fatale. Munch repeatedly associated the symbol of red hair with sin (sunde), with womens’ tresses often entwining around a helpless man. Here, the woman’s long, red hair streams in profusion around her body and face, enveloping her in sin. The duality of her exposed breasts and intense, downward stare entices the male gaze while connotating potential danger, her emerald eyes glowing. Through expertly simplified forms and expressionistic color, Die Sünde is emblematic of the haunting and melancholic sensibilities that pervade Munch’s oeuvre.The female subject of Die Sünde was initially believed to be the artist’s ex-fiancée Tulla Larsen, with whom Munch had an often-tumultuous relationship; the same year of this print, the couple had an argument in which shots were fired, resulting in a gunshot wound to a finger on Munch’s left hand. However, Munch scholar Arne Eggum postulated that that the woman was likely a professional model who posed regularly for the artist in his Berlin studio, identifying a photograph taken by Munch in February 1902 as the source image for the woman’s position and expression; Munch also used the photograph for the painting The Red Haired Nude, and the model reoccurs in his 1907 painting Death of Marat, both in the collection of Oslo’s Munch Museet. The 1893 painting Die Sünde by his German contemporary Franz Stuck, which depicts a figure in the same position and state of undress his own interpretation of the late nineteenth century femme fatale trope, also likely inspired Munch’s image.
[Left]: Photograph by Munch of model in his studio, Berlin, 1902. Munch-museet, Oslo, 2927. Image: © Munchmuseet
[Right]: Franz Stuck, Die Sünde, 1893. Neue Pinakothek, Munich, Bavarian State Painting Collections, 7925.Munch was an undisputed master of the print medium and made no fewer than 800 prints during his prolific career across lithography, intaglio and woodcuts. Die Sünde stands out from his body of printmaking as one of the most complex and innovative examples of his color printing techniques, demonstrating a richly woven color composition of the sort that contemporary critic André Mellerio defined as the height of achievement in the graphic arts.i
Through the development of Die Sünde, Munch devised an ingenious technique for uniting color and drawing into lithographic matrix, instead of using numerous stones to print various elements of the composition. Munch decided to instead block out areas on the original keystone and take a transfer impression of the rest of the image, transferring this part to the verso of the same stone. Thus, each side of the single slab carried a certain aspect of the complete image: on one side was the body (the beige stone), and on the other was the hair (the red stone), with the piercing green eyes likely touched in independently on the beige side.ii Though Munch frequently worked with transfer lithography, Die Sünde is the only known instance in which the artist separated parts of the same drawing and then reunited them in different colors, making it an exceptionally prime example of Munch’s keen interest in technical experimentation.
i André Mellerio, La litthographie originale en coleurs, 1989.
ii Elizabeth Prelinger and Michael Parke-Taylor, The Symbolist Prints of Edvard Munch: The Vivian and David Campbell Collection, 1996, p. 191.
Provenance
Sotheby's, London, Old Master, Modern and Contemporary Prints, July 2, 2002, lot 126
Theodore B. Donson, Ltd., New York
Private Collection, New York (acquired in 2003)
Thence by descent to the present ownerLiterature
Gustav Schiefler 142
Gerd Woll 198
Property from a Private Collection, New York
1
Woman with Red Hair and Green Eyes, The Sin (Die Sünde) (S. 142, W. 198)
1902
Lithograph in yellow, red and green (blue applied over yellow creating green in the eyes) from two stones, on tissue-thin paper, with large margins.
I. 27 1/2 x 15 3/4 in. (69.9 x 40 cm)
S. 31 1/4 x 19 1/2 in. (79.4 x 49.5 cm)
Traces of an erased signature, Woll's second state (of five), framed.
Estimate
$30,000 - 50,000
Sold for $58,420
Editions & Works on Paper
New York Auction 22 - 24 October 2024
149
This lot is no longer available.
344
This lot is no longer available.
376
This lot is no longer available.
