Bathing Boys

Bathing Boys from 1904 belongs to Munch's extended engagement with the male bathing subject that culminated in the monumental Bathing Men of 1907-08. In 1904 Munch was experiencing a rare period of relative stability and was spending time at the Norwegian coast and in Lübeck, and the bathing subject gave him a way to explore male physicality, childhood, and the Norwegian summer world that contrasted with the psychological darkness of his interior Symbolist works. The Art Museums of Bergen hold this as part of Norway's public collection of Munch's more naturalistic, plein-air-influenced work.

Munch applies broad, confident strokes of bright summer color to the bathing boys scene, the figures placed in a sunlit beach environment that justifies a lighter, more Impressionist palette than he typically used. The boys' bodies are rendered with directness and economy, their movements captured with a sketchy immediacy.