Summer Night's Dream

In December 1893 Munch rented rooms on Unter den Linden in Berlin and hung six paintings under one heading, Study for a Series, Love. It was the first form of the cycle he later called the Frieze of Life, and the Museum of Fine Arts counts this canvas as the opening picture of the love sequence. A young woman in a pale dress stands among the trunks of a pine wood by the water on a summer night, her hands behind her back, her face turned toward us. The setting is probably the Borre forest near Åsgårdstrand, a traditional place for courting during Norway's light midsummer nights. Munch linked the figure to his memory of Milly Thaulow, a married woman he fell for in his early twenties. The picture goes by two titles, Summer Night's Dream and The Voice. Munch sold it to a Swedish couple who knew him personally, and Boston bought it in 1959.