Trees by the Beach (The Linde Frieze)

Trees by the Beach (The Linde Frieze) by Edvard Munch from 1904, held at the Munch Museum, belongs to the decorative panel series for the Linde villa that combined figures in nature with purely landscape elements. Trees at the beach's edge — where land gives way to water, and forest gives way to open coastal space — was a transitional subject that suited the Linde Frieze's theme of children and nature. The trees at the water's edge were a motif Munch had explored in his Åsgårdstrand paintings, where the lime trees and willows that grew near the fjord's edge created a characteristic local landscape. In the frieze context, this landscape panel provided a natural interlude between the figure panels.

Munch renders the coastal trees with vertical, fluid strokes that capture the forms of birch or lime trees bending toward the water's surface. His palette for this coastal landscape panel would use the distinctive blue-greens of the Norwegian fjord water contrasted against the fresh greens of the coastal vegetation.