Edvard Munch

Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne (acquired in 1925;
de-accessioned in 1938)
Harald Holst Halvorsens Kunsthandel, Oslo, (acquired from the above in 1938)
Sale: Harald Holst Halvorsens Kunsthandel, Oslo, 1939, lot 36
Generalkonsul P. M. Röwde, Oslo (purchased at the above sale)
Thence by descent to the present owner

The present work depicts the fields near Ekely, just outside Oslo, where Munch settled in 1916. Ekely was a large estate with several buildings and eleven acres of grounds, where Munch supervised farming during the war years. Having recovered form his earlier nervous breakdown, the artist embraced the tranquillity of this self-sufficient environment away from the city. Whilst Munch's early landscapes usually mirror the artist’s mood, often with sombre or mystical undertones, his later treatment of this genre is a celebration of nature and its forces. The regular lines of the ploughed field convey a sense of harmony between man and nature, while compositionally providing a perspectival device that leads the viewer's eye towards the background.

Elizabeth Prelinger wrote about Munch's art executed at Ekely: 'Ekely became for Munch what the villa and garden at Giverny meant for the Impressionist painter Claude Monet: a rich source of inspiration for his art and nourishment for his soul. Drawing upon the many vistas throughout Ekely, Munch replaced the cycle of human emotional experience - the frequent subject of his early art - with the age-old tradition of celebrating the grand cycle of life as seen through the seasons and seasonal activities. Although many of the images seem like simple depictions of simple activities, they are layered with the issues that the artist had been confronting since returning to Norway. These include the politics of subject matter and painting style' (E. Prelinger, After the Scream: The Late Paintings of Edvard Munch (exhibition catalogue), High Museum of Art, Atlanta, 2002, p. 51).