Danse au bord de la mer

In 1906 the Berlin director Max Reinhardt hired Munch to design Ibsen's Ghosts for his new Kammerspiele and then to paint a frieze for the hall on the floor above. For that commission Munch mixed a chalky casein tempera and worked on rough, unprimed canvas, so the finished surface would sit matt and absorbent like old wall painting. This long picture comes out of the same two years and the same method. It is 90 centimetres high and almost two and a half metres wide, a shape made for a wall rather than for a room of easel paintings. The shore is Aasgaardstrand, the small resort on the Oslofjord where Munch had bought a cottage in 1898 and where he set the dancing figures again and again.