A macieira

In 1922 the Kunsthaus Zurich hung more than 70 Munch paintings in a show put together by its director Wilhelm Wartmann. It was the artist's first big appearance in Switzerland, Swiss collectors bought out of it, and it is why Zurich now holds the largest group of his paintings anywhere outside Norway.

This canvas was painted the year before, in the orchard at Ekely, the small property on the western edge of Kristiania, as Oslo was then called, that Munch had bought in 1916. He worked outdoors there for most of the year, and the fruit trees keep coming back in his painting for the rest of his life.

The leaves on this tree have already gone yellow, which puts it late in a Norwegian autumn, a few weeks ahead of the snow he painted just as often.