Bathing Children

In the late 1890s Munch was deep in the cycle of paintings on love, anxiety and death that became his Frieze of Life. The same years at Åsgårdstrand, the village on the Oslofjord where he had spent most summers since 1885, also gave him a run of far lighter scenes of young people bathing off the shore. The museum in Oslo that holds this canvas dates it only to a span, 1897 to 1899, and lists a picture of bathing girls from those years as its companion.

Four children share the water here. One bends over at the upper left, another wades out with both arms spread, and a dark-haired child in red crouches at the right. In the foreground a fair-haired child lies back in the water among long curling strokes of dark red. The signature sits at the lower left, “E Munch”.