Aasgaardstrand

Aasgaardstrand of 1904, now at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, takes a broader view of the Oslo fjord village than the intimate garden subjects — looking at the town from a distance that reveals its relationship to the fjord landscape surrounding it, the wooden houses and church set against the water and the gentle hills of the opposite bank. The Wadsworth Atheneum, America's oldest public art museum, acquired this canvas as part of its European modern art collection, demonstrating the North American enthusiasm for Munch that developed in the early twentieth century through major German dealers who introduced his work to American collectors. Åsgårdstrand's distinctive character — a small painted wooden town on the edge of the Oslo fjord, its summer visitors including artists and intellectuals, its winters quiet and introspective — comes through in this broader landscape view as a place shaped by the particular quality of Norwegian fjord light and the intimate scale of a community built at the water's edge.

Munch renders the Åsgårdstrand village with his characteristic directness — the settlement's specific character (its wooden houses, its relationship to the fjord, and the quality of the coastal light) depicted with his loose, expressive handling. His palette in these coastal Norwegian subjects tends toward the warm greens, blues, and ochres of the Norwegian summer fjord landscape. The composition's specific vantage point creates a different spatial relationship to the village than his garden subjects.