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拍品专文
Painted in 1914-1915, Edvard Munch’s Bjørkestammer (Birch Trunks) describes a wintery Nordic landscape in flowing, expressive strokes of bright colour, imbuing the scene with a crystalline luminosity that evokes the crisp sunlight of winter or early spring. At this time, the artist was living primarily on the quiet, picturesque island of Jeløy (also known as Jeløya), south of Oslo. Renting a large house, which he reportedly furnished with only a telephone and his canvases, Munch immersed himself in this rural landscape, painting picturesque views of the trees, fields and coastline in all weathers and seasons, recording his direct impressions of nature on his canvases. After years of turmoil and suffering, this was an important period of renewal in Munch’s work, his compositions filled with creative vigour. Thanks to a series of important exhibitions – including the Sonderbund-Austellung in Cologne and the Armory Show in New York – he reached a new level of international recognition, and was finally gaining renown in his homeland of Norway. ‘Judging from the mood of happiness that shines through these paintings, he must have been intoxicated by the idea of gradually rediscovering his own lost homeland…’ Ragna Stang has written. ‘As he himself said, “The molecules that make up my soul are at peace”’ (Edvard Munch: The Man and His Art, New York, 1977, p. 220).
Here, the vitality and resilience of nature is conveyed through the sturdy forms of the trees, captured here in winter, their branches stripped of leaves. The undulating profile of the ground is indicated by loose passages and sinuous curving strokes that overlap and intertwine in a dynamic layering effect, shifting from softly brushed clouds of pigment, to passages of thicker impasto. Among this network of brushstrokes, Munch leaves portions of the raw canvas visible, allowing its bright white tones to punctuate the interplay of green, violet, blue and reddish mahogany tones. The titular birch trees traverse the field at regular intervals, their slender trunks and the distinctive markings of the silvery bark creating a decorative effect that gradually becomes an abstract play of colour as they recede into the distance. Munch crops the view so that the trees in the foreground are cut off – only in the background do their full profiles appear, the bare branches reaching upwards towards the overcast sky, small slivers of blue peeking out between the clouds.
Bjørkestammer was likely acquired directly from the artist by the Norwegian businessman, author and commentator Rolf E. Stenersen, who had a long-standing and enthusiastic passion for Munch’s work. According to the collector, he sold his confirmation gifts as a young teenager in order to acquire his first painting by the artist, and at the age of just eighteen travelled to Munch’s home and studio in Ekely to meet him in person. This marked the beginning of a close and stimulating relationship between the two men – the artist considered him among his tight circle of friends and champions, whom he described as ‘my soldiers, my warriors, my battalions, the Guardians of my art’ (quoted in S. Prideaux, Edvard Munch: Behind “The Scream”, New Haven, 2005, p. 268). Munch became a key mentor for the collector, providing crucial advice on acquiring art, telling Stenersen ‘Don’t buy well-known or established artists. Buy what strikes you as new and good, strange and peculiar’ (quoted in ‘The Art Collector Rolf Stenersen,’ Munch Museet, online, accessed 29 September 2026).
Stenersen quickly became Munch’s trusted financial advisor and most important patron, amassing a vast collection of his work over the course of his lifetime, many of which he hung in his modernist home just outside of Oslo. Munch also made two oil portraits of Stenersen in 1925-1926 (Woll, nos. 1558-1559), giving one to the sitter and keeping the other for himself, as was his habit: ‘I must have some friends on the wall,’ he explained (quoted in ibid., p. 268). A decade later, he painted Stenersen’s wife Annie and the couple’s young sons Johan Martin and Sten (Woll, nos. 1726-1727, 1729-1731). Stenersen’s biography of Munch, first published in 1944, remains one of the most important accounts of the artist’s life and often eccentric working habits, and a testament to their close and enduring friendship through the years.
Here, the vitality and resilience of nature is conveyed through the sturdy forms of the trees, captured here in winter, their branches stripped of leaves. The undulating profile of the ground is indicated by loose passages and sinuous curving strokes that overlap and intertwine in a dynamic layering effect, shifting from softly brushed clouds of pigment, to passages of thicker impasto. Among this network of brushstrokes, Munch leaves portions of the raw canvas visible, allowing its bright white tones to punctuate the interplay of green, violet, blue and reddish mahogany tones. The titular birch trees traverse the field at regular intervals, their slender trunks and the distinctive markings of the silvery bark creating a decorative effect that gradually becomes an abstract play of colour as they recede into the distance. Munch crops the view so that the trees in the foreground are cut off – only in the background do their full profiles appear, the bare branches reaching upwards towards the overcast sky, small slivers of blue peeking out between the clouds.
Bjørkestammer was likely acquired directly from the artist by the Norwegian businessman, author and commentator Rolf E. Stenersen, who had a long-standing and enthusiastic passion for Munch’s work. According to the collector, he sold his confirmation gifts as a young teenager in order to acquire his first painting by the artist, and at the age of just eighteen travelled to Munch’s home and studio in Ekely to meet him in person. This marked the beginning of a close and stimulating relationship between the two men – the artist considered him among his tight circle of friends and champions, whom he described as ‘my soldiers, my warriors, my battalions, the Guardians of my art’ (quoted in S. Prideaux, Edvard Munch: Behind “The Scream”, New Haven, 2005, p. 268). Munch became a key mentor for the collector, providing crucial advice on acquiring art, telling Stenersen ‘Don’t buy well-known or established artists. Buy what strikes you as new and good, strange and peculiar’ (quoted in ‘The Art Collector Rolf Stenersen,’ Munch Museet, online, accessed 29 September 2026).
Stenersen quickly became Munch’s trusted financial advisor and most important patron, amassing a vast collection of his work over the course of his lifetime, many of which he hung in his modernist home just outside of Oslo. Munch also made two oil portraits of Stenersen in 1925-1926 (Woll, nos. 1558-1559), giving one to the sitter and keeping the other for himself, as was his habit: ‘I must have some friends on the wall,’ he explained (quoted in ibid., p. 268). A decade later, he painted Stenersen’s wife Annie and the couple’s young sons Johan Martin and Sten (Woll, nos. 1726-1727, 1729-1731). Stenersen’s biography of Munch, first published in 1944, remains one of the most important accounts of the artist’s life and often eccentric working habits, and a testament to their close and enduring friendship through the years.