Bathing Young Men

The Munch Museum dates this canvas to 1904 and puts a question mark after the year. It is unsigned, and the museum groups it with a much bigger painting of the same subject from that summer. In 1904 Munch was working at Åsgårdstrand, the small resort on the Oslo fjord where he spent his summers, on a picture of naked young men on the shore nearly three metres wide, which belongs to the same collection. This one is about 80 centimetres tall and upright. Two young men stand side by side facing us, and at the right two more crouch by the dark blue water. The sky is a few quick strokes of blue, and much of the foreground is left thin and pale. Like the large canvas, it came to the city of Oslo with the collection Munch left it when he died.