Joan Templeton demonstrates Ibsen´s primordial importance for Munch as a pioneering modernist voice. Munch made more than 400 illustrations of Ibsen´s plays, one of the greatest homages a painter ever made to a writer. In addition to locating these illustrations in Munch´s life and work as a whole, Templeton also studies them as depictions of Ibsen´s plays.

Joan Templeton is Professor of English and comparative literature at Long Island University. Author of Ibsen´s Women.