This year we celebrate 150 years since the birth of one of
the world’s most important modernist artists in the city
that shaped him as a painter and today houses the largest
collections of his work. Edvard Munch, through the themes
he explored, his subject matter and the manner in which he
handled paint, made some of the most significant
contributions to Modernism during the fin-de-siècle and
early 20th century.

Born in Norway in 1863, Munch’s childhood was plagued
by the traumatic deaths of his mother and sister from
tuberculosis, which led him to explore and re-examine the
themes of angst, love and death throughout his career.
Rebelling against his religious father and the bourgeois
society of Christiania (Oslo), Munch’s original and radical
artistic ideals propelled him into the bohemian community
of artisans. The young artist travelled, studied and
exhibited extensively throughout France and Germany as
he moved away from Norse naturalism and towards the
styles adopted by European artists such as Courbet and
Manet.

During our time in Oslo we will discover the city through
the artist’s eyes and the locations that inspired his famous
paintings. We will examine the highly anticipated
anniversary exhibition, jointly hosted by Oslo’s Munch
Museum and the National Museum of Art - this huge
retrospective is a once in a lifetime chance to see so many
of the artist’s works together. Beyond the exhibition we
visit some of the permanent features that Munch left to the
city: the twelve paintings adorning the workers’ canteen of
the Freia chocolate factory and the mural of the Great Hall
of Oslo University.

Further afield, on the banks of the magnificent Oslo Fjord
we are immersed into Munch’s world of images and the
most intimate encounter with the man at his summer home
in Åsgårdstrand. Munch hardly ever missed a summer here,
even during his self-imposed exile to Europe, and it
provided inspiration for such works as The Dance of Life
(1899) and The Girls on the Bridge (1908).

We stay throughout at the comfortable Hotel
Bondeheimen, centrally located in Oslo, within easy
walking distance of Karl Johan gate, oslo’s main street,
where we find the National Gallery and Oslo University.

This tour will be led by Peter Higginson, PhD, an art
historian and consultant lecturer at Christie’s Education,
London. Peter specialises in the art and culture of early
modern Europe, and the Modern period.

Peter will be joined for parts of the tour by guest lecturer
Dr Frank Hoifodt. Dr Hoifodt was previously a curator and
lecturer at the Munch Museum and has published
extensively on the life and work of Edvard Munch, most
recently Edvard Munch (Tate publishing 2012).