Canal at Sunset

In May 1907 Munch arrived in Warnemünde, a fishing village and seaside resort on the German Baltic coast near Rostock, and he ended up staying about 18 months. He rented rooms from the lighthouse keeper in a house on Am Strom, the street that runs along the town's canal, and in 1908 he kept painting the water outside. The Munch Museum holds this sunset together with two other canal views from the same year, one of them under dark clouds. In this one the sun hangs low over the far bank and a sailing boat crosses the canal, while the foreground dissolves into loose strokes of green. Those months were among his most productive, and in Warnemünde he also began a large canvas of nude bathers on the beach. In October 1908 the stay ended abruptly, when Munch, worn out and drinking heavily, left for a private clinic in Copenhagen run by the doctor Daniel Jacobson.