Il bambino che annega

By 1904 Munch was living between Berlin and the Norwegian coast, and his colour had gone high and sweet, pinks and oranges laid on thin. This is one of those pictures. A quay crosses it in full sun, with figures in hats walking along the far side and boats drawn up beyond them, and in the foreground a child is going down inside a ring of blue water while nobody on the promenade turns round. His own museum in Oslo still dates it with a question mark, 1904 or thereabouts, because he rarely dated a canvas and would often take it up again years later. It carries the number 858 in the museum's painting inventory, and Gerd Woll's catalogue of his paintings lists it as 581.