Le ragazze sul ponte

By 1901, Edvard Munch had already made the pictures that unsettled Europe, The Scream chief among them. This is a quieter register. The setting is Aasgaardstrand, a small resort town on the Oslo fjord where Munch spent his summers, and the spot is a real one: the pier and its railing, the great linden tree, the pale houses, the still water holding their reflection. Three young women stand close together at the rail, turned toward the water. Munch pulls in nearer to them here than in most of his other takes on the scene, so their mood carries more weight than the view does. And there were many takes. He came back to this same spot for more than thirty years, painting the motif about a dozen times in oil and cutting it into etchings, lithographs, and woodcuts besides.