Landscape by Travemünde

The Baltic coastal landscape at Travemünde, painted during Munch's extended stay in the Lübeck region in 1903, presented him with very different pictorial challenges from his Norwegian coastal subjects. Where the Oslofjord offered dramatic geology — the ancient gneiss rock, the steep forested slopes, the deep reflective water — Travemünde's Baltic shore was flat, exposed, and dominated by the wide sky above. Munch had to adapt his landscape language to material that was, in topographic terms, less inherently dramatic but atmospherically rich in its own way. The Munch Museum holds this alongside other works from his German period, preserving the Baltic landscapes as a coherent strand in his output that is often overlooked in favor of his more celebrated Norwegian coastal subjects and figure paintings. The comparison between Norwegian and Baltic landscape subjects reveals how sensitively Munch adjusted his approach to different physical and climatic conditions.

Munch's Baltic landscape composition emphasizes the horizontal to a degree unusual even for a painter consistently drawn to flat, horizon-dominated formats. The sky and sea are given equal weight in a composition structured around the subtle color difference between Baltic water and northern sky.