Trees and Garden Wall in Åsgårdstrand

Trees and Garden Wall in Åsgårdstrand of 1902 at the Musée d'Orsay shows Munch at his most intimate and domestic — the specific apple trees and garden wall of the small Norwegian coastal property he had bought in Åsgårdstrand providing subjects of daily familiarity rather than psychological drama. The Orsay's acquisition of this canvas placed it within the foremost French collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art, identifying it as a significant work within his overall production despite its apparently modest subject. The garden at Åsgårdstrand was for Munch a private landscape charged with personal memory — he had painted the village and its surroundings since the 1880s, and the specific trees and walls of his own property carried the accumulated resonance of decades of summer returns. His garden subjects demonstrated a more relaxed and tender aspect of his artistic personality than the anguished psychological compositions for which he was primarily known, the familiar trees and old stone walls painted with a directness and warmth that contrasts with the cosmic anxieties of The Scream or the Frieze of Life.

Munch renders the garden trees and wall with the directness and atmospheric sensitivity of his best outdoor subjects — the specific character of the Norwegian apple trees and the stone or wooden garden wall depicted with close observational engagement. His handling of the light on the garden vegetation and the quality of the summer or autumn Norwegian coastal atmosphere creates the specific visual character of the Åsgårdstrand garden. The intimacy of the garden subject creates a more restrained register than his major psychological compositions.