View from Fossveien

From 1877 to 1882 the Munch family rented a flat at Fossveien 7 in Grünerløkka, a working district that had grown up around the mills on the Akerselva river in Kristiania, as Oslo was then called. From the windows they looked down on Grüner's garden, an old plot by the riverbank named after Friedrich Grüner, who ran the town's mint in the 1600s. This small winter view looks out over it, bare trees and snow, with houses on the far side.

It is oil on a scrap of cardboard about 15 centimetres tall, and the pencil notes on it tell its story. On the front someone, perhaps Munch himself, wrote "January 80". On the back he signed it and added "81", with the words "part of Grüner's garden, Christiania". The museum dates it 1881, when he was 17 and had only just decided to become a painter.

That ground was later meant for tenement blocks, but after the Kristiania property crash of 1898 it was left open, and today it is the riverside park called Kuba.