Taarbæk Harbour

Munch spent the summer of 1905 in Denmark, at Taarbæk, an old fishing village on the Øresund just north of Copenhagen. Its boats had long carried their catch down to the fish market in the city, but by then the railway ran to neighbouring Klampenborg and a bathing hotel had opened in the village, so the little harbour sat between working fishermen and summer visitors. Munch had come to get away from trouble at home in Norway. What he painted here is open and bright: boats with red sails lying in still water, pale wooden houses behind them, loose blue clouds overhead. The signature at lower right reads E Munch, followed by a date whose last digit is hard to make out. In 2009 the painting was shown at Ordrupgaard, a museum a few kilometres down the coast, in an exhibition on Munch and Denmark.