Girls picking Fruit (The Linde Frieze)

Max Linde was an eye doctor in Lübeck and one of the first Germans to collect Munch seriously. He asked the painter to decorate the room where his sons slept. Munch worked on the series through the summer of 1904 and brought the canvases to Lübeck that December, and Linde refused them. Couples kissing and embracing were not what he had wanted in a children's room, and the colours fought with the French furnishings. He wrote to Munch asking him to stick to childish subjects, which he spelled out as no people kissing or making love. This one, girls gathering fruit in a garden, is among the mildest of the group, and it went back to Norway with the rest. The shape still gives the commission away. At 169 centimetres across and barely 90 high, it was made to run along a wall. Linde stayed on good terms and bought another picture to cover part of Munch's loss.