Modelo junto à cadeira de vime

By 1919 the man who had painted The Scream was in his mid-fifties, living behind the walls of Ekely, his estate on the edge of Kristiania, today's Oslo. That same winter he caught the influenza then killing millions across Europe, and painted himself gaunt in a wicker chair, barely recovered. Here the wicker chair returns, but the mood has turned. A hired model stands beside it, and Munch drapes the seat with a cloth of hot reds she seems to study as intently as we study her. The anxious blues of his youth have given way to broad, worked strokes and open colour. He painted the nude many times in these Ekely years, less as drama than as something to keep looking at.