Dark Spruce Forest

In 1899 Munch was known for the raw human pictures of his Frieze of Life, the anxious faces and pale lovers. This one is only trees. He worked it in casein, a fast, matte, chalky paint more at home on a wall than a canvas, and left the linen unprimed so its weave shows through the dark. Tall spruces press together in the blue-grey of late dusk, with no figure anywhere. The Munch Museum dates his work on the picture to between 1899 and 1902, years he spent largely back in Norway, painting the landscape around him.