Girls watering Flowers (The Linde Frieze)

Girls Watering Flowers (The Linde Frieze) by Edvard Munch from 1904, held at the Munch Museum, belongs to the major decorative commission Munch executed for the Linde villa in Lübeck — a frieze intended to decorate the children's room of Max Linde's house. The frieze depicted the life of children at play and in nature, and the image of girls watering flowers was among the most gentle and domestic of his Linde Frieze subjects. Dr. Linde ultimately refused the frieze, finding it too unconventional for a domestic setting, but Munch retained the panels and they became important works in their own right. This image stands in striking contrast to the psychological intensity of his Frieze of Life imagery.

Munch approaches the decorative frieze subject with a lighter, more openly colored palette than his symbolic figure paintings, using the blue, green, and warm tones of a garden setting. The girls' figures are rendered with a simplicity appropriate to a domestic decorative context, the watering gesture creating a gentle, rhythmic action.