1908, Edvard Munch, Men on the Seashore -- Belvedere Palace (Vienna)
From the museum label: Summer 1907. Munch traveled to Warnemünde, a resort on the Baltic Sea, for a period of convalescence. He rented a small fisherman's cottage not far from the sea, where he discovered a new subject. For the first time the Norwegian artist focused his attention on the naked male body. The following year, he painted two men on the beach in a frontal pose, while a third plunges into the waves in the background. This version was intended for an exhibition at Kunstsalon Clematis in Hamburg, but it never left the gallery's cellar: "People are still not used to seeing naked men," as the collector Gustav Schiefler wrote to Munch. Works by the Norwegian painter were shown at the Vienna Secession in 1904.
1908, Edvard Munch, Men on the Seashore -- Belvedere Palace (Vienna)
From the museum label: Summer 1907. Munch traveled to Warnemünde, a resort on the Baltic Sea, for a period of convalescence. He rented a small fisherman's cottage not far from the sea, where he discovered a new subject. For the first time the Norwegian artist focused his attention on the naked male body. The following year, he painted two men on the beach in a frontal pose, while a third plunges into the waves in the background. This version was intended for an exhibition at Kunstsalon Clematis in Hamburg, but it never left the gallery's cellar: "People are still not used to seeing naked men," as the collector Gustav Schiefler wrote to Munch. Works by the Norwegian painter were shown at the Vienna Secession in 1904.