Gardener in Dr. Linde's Garden

Gardener in Dr. Linde's Garden by Edvard Munch from 1903, confiscated by the Nazis as part of their 1937 degenerate art campaign, depicts one of the staff employed at Max Linde's villa in Lübeck — the house where Munch stayed during his extended German residency and for which he created the major Linde Frieze decorations. A professional gardener at work in a formal garden was a subject very different from Munch's usual psychological intensity, reflecting the grounded, practical world of the Linde household's daily operation. Munch's eye for human character was not limited to the bourgeois or the existentially fraught — he could find equal interest in the working man at his seasonal tasks.

Munch renders the gardener figure in the outdoor setting with his characteristic bold handling, using the garden's forms — beds, hedges, paths — as a compositional context for the working figure. His palette here would use the greens and browns of a well-tended formal garden contrasted against the gardener's working clothing.