Bathing Scene from Åsgårdstrand

In the lower right corner, after Munch's name, there are two years, 1904 and 1936. The beach is Åsgårdstrand, a small summer town on the Oslofjord where Munch had bought a little wooden house in 1898. He painted this crowd of bathers there in 1904, then took the same canvas up again 32 years later, when he was 72.

That second year is also when the picture changed hands. It belonged to Rolf Stenersen, an Oslo businessman who was Munch's friend and adviser on money, and in 1936 Stenersen gave his collection to Aker, the municipality next to Oslo, and showed it at the artists' exhibition hall, Kunstnernes Hus. The painting did not stay in public ownership. By 1954 it was in Zurich, in the collection of the industrialist Emil Bührle, and it has been in private hands ever since, offered at Sotheby's in New York in 2023.