O Sol

In 1909 the university in Kristiania, as Oslo was then called, announced a competition to decorate the ceremonial hall it was building for its centenary in 1911. Munch entered, and for the next few years he worked at Kragerø on the south coast, painting outdoors with canvases of this size propped up in the open and left to take the weather. The sun here comes up over the skerries he could see from that property. The committee argued about his designs for years, and they did not go up in the Aula until 1916. This is the full-size version he kept, nearly eight metres across, and the rays run right off the edges because on the hall wall they were meant to carry on into the panels hanging on either side.