Vårlandskap (Spring Landscape), painted circa 1923-24, is a boldly painted celebration of the Ekely countryside executed in Munch’s characteristic easily-flowing brushstrokes. In 1916, Munch purchased the estate of Ekely at Skøyen just outside Kristiania, present-day Oslo, where he lived for the remainder of his life. Ekely encompassed eleven acres of grounds including sweeping farmland and an elm forest. Having recovered from his earlier nervous breakdown, the artist embraced the tranquillity of this self-sufficient environment away from the city. While Munch's early landscapes usually mirror the artist’s mood, often with somber or mystical undertones, his later treatment of this genre is a celebration of nature and its forces. With the expansive fields, trees and distant hills Vårlandskap perfectly captures the hopeful and refreshing sensation of early spring.

Elizabeth Prelinger wrote about Munch's art executed at Ekely: "Ekely became for Munch what the villa and garden at Giverny meant for the Impressionist painter Claude Monet: a rich source of inspiration for his art and nourishment for his soul. Drawing upon the many vistas throughout Ekely, Munch replaced the cycle of human emotional experience—the frequent subject of his early art—with the age-old tradition of celebrating the grand cycle of life as seen through the seasons and seasonal activities. Although many of the images seem like simple depictions of simple activities, they are layered with the issues that the artist had been confronting since returning to Norway. These include the politics of subject matter and painting style" (E. Prelinger, After the Scream: The Late Paintings of Edvard Munch (exhibition catalogue), High Museum of Art, Atlanta, 2002, p. 51).

The rambling property at Ekely proved the perfect setting for Munch to build and experiment with a variety of indoor and outdoor studios. “Ekely had previously been a plant nursery. After Munch acquired the estate, various kinds of open air studios emerged in the grounds. The largest complex, made up of what Munch called his Southern and Northern Studios, was erected close to the servant’s quarters. This complex consisted of two simple wooden buildings, but with chalet-style façades to satisfy the planning authorities’ requirements for them to fit in with other buildings in the area. A large open area between the two wooden buildings was divided by a wall, forming two more open-air studios. Munch’s satisfaction with his working conditions at Ekely is reflected in many colorful paintings inspired by his immediate surroundings. He painted the effect of the seasons on his green and fertile garden and the woods of ancient gnarled elms in the grounds. Several paintings document the construction of the Winter Studio. The interactions of humans and nature is depicted in paintings of ploughing horses and harvests. From Ekely, Munch also painted some atmospheric nocturnal winter landscapes, of which Starry Night is the most famous [see fig. 1]. He also had several long-term models in his years at Ekely, whom he depicted in nude studies and figure compositions [see fig. 2]…. In a series of self portraits completed at Ekely, Munch confronted himself with complete candor, for example in Self-Portrait Between the Clock and the Bed [see fig. 3]. In the villa’s upstairs kitchen he installed a printmaking workshop, where he created entirely new images and new versions of existing ones” (P. Pettersen., “My Châteaux”. A Travel Guide to Edvard Munch’s Homes in Norway, Oslo, 2019, p. 28).

By the t.mes Munch moved to Ekely he was no longer a young man. In 1923, around the t.mes the present work was painted, Munch turned sixty. Unwilling to be feted in the traditional manner, he came up with a distinct solution to avoid celebration: “Munch celebrated his sixtieth birthday in December 1923. It was the custom in Norway to celebrate great birthdays of great.mes n by a nightt.mes procession through the streets lit by flaming torches. Jens Thiis was sent as an emissary to broker the idea. ‘A torchlight procession? Me standing on a balcony waving? I don’t think so.’ Came the evening, he engaged a taxi and rode round and round the town until the danger was past” (S. Prideaux, Edvard Munch: Behind the Scream, London, 2005, p. 306).

Munch himself considered the 1920s as some of the most productive years of his career. His emphasis during this t.mes transitioned from the interior scenes with narrative to outdoor scenes that embraced a new sense of abstraction and liberated color. Alongside Van Gogh, Munch was the key pioneer of Expressionism whose influence on modern art cannot be overstated. Both artists make use of the landscape as a vehicle to express inner states of being (see fig. 4). The expressive use of contrast and form in the present work serves not only to render a certain atmosphere, but also to convey a particular mood. In depicting nature in such a highly individual manner, Munch draws on the tradition of stemningsmaleri, or “mood-painting,” characteristic of Nordic art towards the end of the 19th century. Alongside his fellow Norwegian artists such as Sohlberg and Egedius, Munch abandoned the plein-air naturalism which had dominated Norwegian landscape painting in favor of a resonant vision of nature.

The artist himself proclaimed about his personal, expressive use of color: "One must paint from memory. Nature is merely the means. They want the painter to transmit information simply as if he were the camera. Whether or not a painting looks like that landscape is beside the point. Explaining a picture is impossible. The very reason it has been painted is because it cannot be explained any other way....If one wishes to paint that first pale blue morning atmosphere that made such an impression, one cannot simply sit down, start at each object and paint them exactly as one sees them. They must be painted as they were when that motif made such a vivid impression" (quoted in ibid., p. 201).