Dark Spruce Forest

By the end of the 1890s the Norwegian spruce forest had turned into patriotic property. Theodor Kittelsen was drawing trolls into those same woods, the country was arguing its way out of its union with Sweden, and a Norwegian painter was expected to find something national among the trees. Munch painted his forest in 1899 and called it Mørk granskog, dark spruce forest, a title that promises nothing beyond the trees themselves.

He was barely at home that year. Part of the spring went on Florence and Rome, and in the autumn he checked into a sanatorium up in Gudbrandsdalen for his nerves. The panel he left behind is a small one, roughly 45 by 69 centimetres, painted straight onto bare wood with no ground laid underneath, and he never signed it.