Comment:
There are several grounds for choosing 1916 as the dating of this sketchbook. The drawings of lions in the middle of the book were almost certainly done in connection with Cirkus Hagenbeck’s visit to Kristiania in 1916, where we know Munch was present at several shows. His relative Ludvig Ravensberg writes in his diary that they sat together drawing. The urn on page 15 is a sketch for the lithograph series "The United States of Europe" from the same year. Munch also made a trip to Bergen in 1916, and in the last drawing in the book he depicts some of the ruins after the great fire, in which 380 buildings were destroyed and 2700 people became homeless.