Winter Night

Around 1900 Edvard Munch was worn down. Earlier that year he had spent months at a sanatorium up in the Gudbrandsdal valley, resting his nerves after the feverish run of love-and-death pictures he called the Frieze of Life. Back on the coast he settled for a while at Ljan, just outside Kristiania, the city later renamed Oslo, and started painting the fjord in winter. This is one of those canvases. The colour is drained almost all the way down to greys, cold blues and the white of the snow, with a heavy snow-laden fir crowding the foreground. Munch showed pictures from this group at the Vienna Secession in 1904, where the quiet winter scenes were a genuine success. That dark tree in front stands so close it almost blocks the view it frames.