Bathing Men

Edvard Munch's 'Bathing Men' (1907-1908; begun c.1900) is among his most celebrated monumental compositions — the outdoor male bathers depicted with the directness and physical vitality that distinguished his treatment of the figure-in-nature subject from the anxious, claustrophobic atmosphere of his interior psychological subjects. His engagement with outdoor bathing connected to the Nordic health movement and to the broader European interest in the natural, unclothed body in direct contact with water, sun, and the open landscape. The work's monumental scale and its investment of an apparently simple subject with deep symbolic resonance made it central to his mature oeuvre.

Munch renders the bathing men with the loose, expressive brushwork of his mature style — the male figures' forms simplified toward archetypal physical presence, the relationship between the human bodies and the water and landscape setting conveying the theme of life, vitality, and the elemental connection between human existence and the natural world. His palette in this work is characteristically bold and direct, the colors organized for expressive impact rather than naturalistic accuracy.