Neve fresca sul viale

Munch spent 1906 in Germany, moving between spa towns and sanatoria for his nerves and his drinking, and working for the theatre. That autumn Max Reinhardt had him design the staging for Ibsen's Ghosts at the Kammerspiele in Berlin. The winter pictures of these months, this one among them, are linked by scholars to his cure at Elgersburg in Thuringia. The motif is plain: fresh snow, a lane of trees, small figures in strong colour moving under them, everything swung into curves. It belongs with a small group of road and street pictures he made at the time. Munch kept the canvas, as he kept most of his own work, and it went to Oslo with the bequest that became the Munch Museum.