Sunrise in the Harbour

In November 1892 a Berlin artists' association invited Munch to exhibit and then voted, a week after the opening, to close the show. The row made his name in Germany, and he stayed on in Berlin instead of going home. The winter that followed is the one in which he painted The Scream and began gathering the pictures he later hung together as the Frieze of Life. This harbour comes from the same stretch of work. The sun is barely up, a horse waits on the quay, and a few figures move among the boats. It is a small canvas, just over half a metre high, signed in the upper right corner, and the Munch Museum in Oslo dates it across 1893 and 1894, the years he spent mostly in Germany.