Bring your favorites together in your free personal gallery.
Your galleryThe Girl by the Window
Look first
- What catches your attention?
- Where does your eye go next?
- What would you ask about this work?
Show me
Follow the window’s blue rectangles onto the floor, then look at the curtain and the girl’s turned head. What can you see clearly, and what is withheld?
A girl stands at a window at night, partly drawing back a curtain. Munch withholds both her face and a clear view outside. Blue light falls across a floor that seems to tilt toward us, leaving the scene suspended between an ordinary interior and an uncertain mood. The painting’s ambiguity comes from what remains hidden as much as from what is visible.
Oil on canvas · 96.5 × 65.4 cm · Art Institute of Chicago · Post-Impressionism · Symbolism
Look again
What do you notice now?
Try a quick sketch
Take a minute to sketch on any paper. No upload needed.
What did you draw first? What did you leave out?
Details and source
- Museum title
- The Girl by the Window
- Artist
- Edvard Munch (Norwegian, 1863–1944)
- Date
- 1893
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- 96.5 × 65.4 cm (38 × 25 3/4 in.); Framed: 110.5 × 79.4 × 8.9 cm (43 1/2 × 31 1/4 × 3 1/2 in.)
- Credit line
- Searle Family Trust and Goldabelle McComb Finn endowments; Charles H. and Mary F. S. Worcester Collection
- Image license
- CC0 1.0 · Public domain
- Museum record
- Art Institute of Chicago
Galler’s rooms and hanging scale are imagined. The image is the museum’s original digital reproduction.