On the Bridge

Around 1903 much of Munch's support came from Germany, and this big canvas, more than two meters wide, first belonged to one of those German backers, Max Linde, an eye doctor in Lübeck. The Stockholm banker Ernest Thiel later bought it from him for his own growing Munch collection. The scene is the jetty at Åsgårdstrand, a small resort on the Oslo fjord where Munch spent his summers, and a spot he painted again and again, usually with young girls leaning on the railing. Here the girls have become ladies, in long pale dresses and wide summer hats. Thiel's villa on the island of Djurgården opened to the public as a museum in 1926, and the painting is still there.