Hollyhock (The Linde Frieze)

Hollyhock (The Linde Frieze) by Edvard Munch from 1904 belongs to the decorative panel series commissioned by Dr. Max Linde for his villa in Lübeck. Hollyhocks — tall, colorful flowering plants with stately upright stems — were a garden subject associated with cottage gardens and the tradition of decorative flower painting reaching from Dutch seventeenth-century flower pieces through Van Gogh's intense flower studies. In the context of the Linde Frieze, the hollyhock panel would have provided a purely botanical, chromatic element — the flower's vertical forms and bright colors creating a decorative rhythm within the frieze's overall composition. Munch brought his expressive intensity even to this purely ornamental subject.

Munch renders the hollyhock's tall stems and colorful blooms with bold, upward strokes that emphasize the plant's vertical energy. His palette for this botanical subject would exploit the plant's range of colors — deep reds, pinks, whites — applied with the directness of his mature handling.