Edvard Munch painted Mermaid, his first decorative work, in Paris in the summer of 1896, at a time of great intellectual and artistic exploration for him. Like other avant-garde artists associated with the international Symbolist style, Munch was interested in depicting the emotions and fears of the human psyche. Themes of metamorphosis, anxiety, and desire imbue this large-scale mural, designed to fit under the sloping rafters of a great hall in the home of the industrialist and collector Axel Heiberg in Lysaker, Norway. The trapezoidal painting shows a beguiling mermaid lingering in a moonlit cove, seemingly in the process of transforming into a woman. She recalls Norse myths of mermaids as melancholy beings who love humans but cannot live comfortably on land. Munch was likely influenced by these traditional stories and by Lady from the Sea, a play by the great Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen that opens with a scene of an artist painting a mermaid in the brackish water of the shore. Jennifer A. Thompson, from Philadelphia Museum of Art: Handbook of the Collections, 2009.