From Hisøya near Arendal

From Hisøya near Arendal of 1886 shows Munch painting the flat-topped skerry landscape of the Skagerrak coast in southern Norway — a quieter, less dramatically fjord-dominated coastline than the Oslo fjord landscape of his Åsgårdstrand subjects. The island of Hisøya near Arendal gave him a coastal subject with a different atmospheric character: lower horizons, more open sea, the particular light of a coastline facing south toward Denmark across the Skagerrak. Munch's occasional departures from his primary Åsgårdstrand territory to other Norwegian coastal locations produced a body of lesser-known landscape work that demonstrates his range of observation beyond the fjord subjects for which he is best known. The 1886 dating places this canvas in the year immediately after The Sick Child, when he was still working through his relationship to Naturalism while developing the more psychologically charged approach that would define his mature art.

The composition is organized as a simple horizontal sequence of rock, water, and sky, each zone given a distinct but closely related tonal value. Munch's brushwork at this stage is controlled and descriptive rather than expressive, building the coastal atmosphere through the accumulation of short, consistent marks across the surface.