サクセゴーズガーテより

Saxegardsgata runs through Gamlebyen, the old town on the east side of Oslo, which was then called Kristiania. It was a quarter of workers' housing and back yards, a long way from the boulevards. Munch had left technical college at 17, against his father's wishes, and enrolled at the Royal School of Art and Design in 1881, and in those first years he painted the streets near home. The museum in Lillehammer, which was given the panel in 1958, dates it to about 1885. The catalogue of his paintings puts it nearer 1882, which would make him 18 when he painted it. Behind that quarter the Ekeberg ridge climbs away from the fjord, and it was the road along the top of it that he used a decade later for The Scream.