The Girls on the Bridge

In 1915 this canvas crossed to San Francisco for the Panama-Pacific exposition, the world's fair marking the opening of the Panama Canal. The war in Europe was in its second year, and neutral Norway sent art. The picture hung there under a different name, Summer Night in Aasgaardstrand, after the small bathing resort on the Oslo fjord where Munch spent his summers. Its owner then was Otto Schultz, a landowner in Steinkjer in central Norway. Munch returned to that wooden jetty about a dozen times over some thirty years, changing the figures and the colours. In this one a group of girls clusters in the middle of the bridge, with the houses and trees of the shore receding behind them. The signature and the year 1902 sit in the upper right corner. The painting never entered a museum. It passed through Norton Simon's collection in Los Angeles and other private hands, and sold in New York in 2016 for 54.5 million dollars.