Telthusbakken with Gamle Aker Church

The church on the hill is Gamle Aker, Old Aker Church, built of stone in the 1100s and the oldest building still standing in Oslo. Its big square tower is the newest part of it. That was added in 1861, when the exterior was restored and a small roof turret gave way to a proper central tower, so when this was painted in 1880 the tower was not yet 20 years old. The slope with the row of houses below is Telthusbakken, named after a storehouse for army tents that was put up beside the church in the 1700s.

Munch had been drawing this church in watercolour since the mid-1870s, when he was a boy of about 12. This version is oil on a piece of cardboard only 12 by 18 centimetres, and it stands as number one in the Munch scholar Gerd Woll's catalogue of his paintings. Today it belongs to a private collection.