Dance of Life

Munch painted this around 1899, near the close of a decade he spent building a cycle he called the Frieze of Life, on love, anxiety and death. The scene is a midsummer night on the shore at Åsgårdstrand, the Norwegian resort where he spent his summers. Couples dance on the grass, but Munch lays out one woman in three stages across the canvas. On the left she stands in white, young and reaching toward the dance. In the centre she dances close in a red dress. On the right she waits alone in black, aged and shut out. The dancing partner at the heart of it holds her almost stiffly, his face closed. Munch had good reason to paint love as a trap, since his own affairs tended to end in wreckage. The painting is in the National Museum in Oslo.