建設現場の労働者たち。オスロ市庁舎装飾のための下絵

Building work on Oslo's new city hall started in 1931, and Munch, who was 67, began making pictures for it before anyone had asked him to. The subject he settled on was the site itself, the men digging and hauling on the ground the hall would stand on. This draft is enormous, roughly 3.4 by 5.7 metres, painted in oil straight onto unprimed canvas, the kind of thing that only makes sense if you expect it to end up on a wall several storeys high. When the city announced its competition for the decoration in 1936, his name was not among those invited, and the walls went to other painters. The hall took far longer than anyone had planned. It opened in 1950, six years after Munch died.