Melancholy

A man sits brooding in the foreground by a sinuous, curving shoreline, his head propped heavily on his hand, while far off on a jetty a couple boards a boat. Edvard Munch drains the scene of bright color and lets the undulating lines of the coast carry the mood of jealousy and dejection. Now in Oslo's National Gallery, Melancholy belongs to his Frieze of Life, the great cycle on love, anxiety, and death - an early masterpiece of mood over description, in which landscape itself becomes the shape of a troubled, lovelorn mind.