Kissing Couples in the Park (The Linde Frieze)

In 1904 Edvard Munch spent two long stays in Lubeck working for Max Linde, an eye surgeon who had bought his pictures early and written a book about him. The commission was a frieze for the nursery in Linde's house, where his four sons slept. Munch delivered a set of large canvases of couples in parks and on beaches, close to the subjects he had been painting for years. Linde turned them down. The motifs were too erotic for a children's room and the colours fought with the French furniture already in it. He ordered portraits of his wife and sons instead, and Munch took the frieze home with him. It stayed in his own hands until he died in 1944, which is why it hangs in Oslo and not in Lubeck.