Moonlight on the Beach

In November 1891 the painter and critic Christian Krohg reviewed a picture Munch had shown that autumn in Kristiania, a man brooding on a shore with a boat behind him, and wrote that Munch deserved thanks because the boat was yellow. He meant that here, at last, was a Norwegian painter willing to change what he saw to fit what he felt. This beach was painted the following year, and it goes further. The full moon hangs over low hills, and below it the same round disc repeats four more times in a vertical strip where the shore meets the water. The boulders in front are laid in with thick strokes of cream and orange and barely modelled. Off to the left a small boat lies at the water's edge, with a jetty and a house beyond it. Munch signed the canvas in the lower right corner, on the last of the rocks.