Two Women in the Woods at Ekely

Around 1920 Munch was building at Ekely, his estate on the edge of Kristiania, as Oslo was then called. A brick winter studio went up in 1919 and 1920, designed by Arnstein Arneberg, who would later design Oslo's town hall with Magnus Poulsson, and open-air studios followed for work on a large scale. In 1922 Munch filled the workers' dining hall of the Freia chocolate factory with twelve wall paintings.

This canvas, about a metre high, comes from the same years and stays close to home. Two women sit on the ground among the old, knotted trees of the woods by the house, a stretch of landscape Munch kept going back to while he lived there. The museum dates it only loosely, to somewhere between 1920 and 1923.