Scène de bordel

In 1902 a Lubeck eye doctor named Max Linde published a small book arguing that Munch's work was the art of the future, and started buying it. The next year Munch was his house guest. It was not an easy stay. A portrait commission in Hamburg arranged through Linde's family collapsed in disagreement, Munch was drinking, and among the pictures tied to those months are several set in a Lubeck brothel. This one he painted on cardboard rather than canvas, the support he reached for when he wanted something down quickly. The subject stayed with him. Four years later, in the Baltic resort of Warnemunde, a single brothel room gave him the group of paintings he called the Green Room.