Kiss by the Window by Edvard Munch is less about romance in full view and more about what happens when two people disappear from the world for a moment.

Painted in 1892, the work shows a couple pressed together beside a window, their faces almost merging into one form. The room is dark, the outside world is still visible, but the figures seem sealed inside their own private weather. It is tender, secretive, and slightly uneasy, which is exactly what makes it Munch.

The painting became part of Munch’s larger Frieze of Life, a series that explored love, desire, anxiety, jealousy, and death. Here, love is not shown as simple sweetness. It is closeness, surrender, and the strange feeling of losing yourself in another person.