Workers on their Way Home 1914

Edvard Munch made Workers on their Way Home with oil on canvas, but when? The date of this piece is unknown. The marks here are so physical and full of feeling, like the artist is wrestling with the paint to get these figures onto the canvas. Look at the colours; they are not literal, not true to life, but the blue tones help create a mood of evening, perhaps a weariness after a long day's work. You get the feeling that the artist is part of this group, immersed in the scene. My eye is drawn to the figure in the lower right, the man in the brown coat, his face obscured by shadow. It feels so intimate, so human, that kind of hidden emotion that you see on the subway. It has the emotional intensity of Van Gogh, but the raw immediacy of the Die Brücke artists. And like them, Munch seems to be asking, how do we convey the weight of human experience? It's a question with no easy answers, and that's what makes it so compelling.