Carolyn and I have appreciated the work of Norwegian artist Edvard Munch, whose painting The Scream has become one of Western art’s most iconic images. Munch is also known for his “soul paintings,” and he was knighted by Norwegian royalty.

Edvard Munch was born in Adalsbruk, Norway in 1863. His father was a doctor and medical officer, who Munch described as “obsessively religious.” His mother was artistically talented, and she encouraged her son to express himself creatively. Munch had an older sister and three younger siblings.

In 1864, Munch’s family moved to Oslo. In 1868, his mother, as well as his older sister, died of tuberculosis, which had a profound impact on him. After his mother’s death, his aunt helped to raise the family. Munch was often ill as a child and kept out of school. During this time, he would often spend his time drawing and painting in watercolors. Munch was tutored in history and literature by his father, who often entertained the family with stories by the American writer Edgar Allan Poe.

The combination of an oppressive religious environment, his poor health, and vivid mystery stories by Poe, worked together to instill nightmares and macabre visions in young Munch’s mind. One of his younger sisters was diagnosed with mental illness at an early age and committed to a mental asylum. There was so much darkness in Munch’s early life that he often expressed the fear that he was going insane.

Munch’s earliest drawings and watercolors depicted the interior of his home and medicine bottles, but he soon began painting some landscapes. By the time Munch was a teenager, art became his primary interest. In 1876, Munch had his first exposure to other artists at the Norwegian Landscape School, where he began to paint in oils and tried to copy the paintings that he was exposed to.

In 1879, Munch enrolled in a technical college, where he studied engineering and excelled in physics, chemistry, and mathematics. He also learned scaled and perspective drawing techniques. Although he did well in college, he left school after just a year, with the determination to become a painter. Munch’s father was disappointed in his son’s decision, as he viewed art as an “unholy trade.” However, Munch saw his art as his salvation, and wrote the following in his diary around this time: “In my art, I attempt to explain life and its meaning to myself.”

In 1881, Munch enrolled at the Royal School of Art and Design in Oslo, which was founded by a distant relative. In 1883, Munch took part in his first public exhibition, and he became friendly with other art students. Munch was inspired by the art movement of Impressionism, which is characterized by small but visible brushstrokes that emphasize the depiction of light in its changing qualities. He was also influenced by Naturalism, which, in contrast, attempts to represent subject matter realistically, and he later became associated with the Symbolist Movement, which sought to depict ideas and emotions hidden behind physical reality.

Munch’s early work consisted largely of self-portraits and nudes. Sadly, all but one of his nude paintings from this period survive, as the others were destroyed by his father, who then refused to give his son any further money for art supplies. In 1886, Munch concluded that Impressionism was too superficial, and he broke off into new experimentation with what he called “soul painting.” This approach to his art served as a means of exploring and expressing the innermost feelings, thoughts, and experiences of the human psyche.

Munch believed that art should transcend the visual representation of the external world and delve into the subjective experience of the individual. “Soul painting” was not just a technique but a philosophy for Munch. It was about revealing the internal struggles and deeper realities of human existence, “making visible what was invisible to the eye.” Through “soul painting,” Munch aimed to capture the anguish, loneliness, love, and despair that he felt and perceived in others. His “soul paintings” were characterized by their evocative use of color, dramatic compositions, and often unsettling subjects that reflect complex emotional states.

His first painting of this type was The Sick Child, which was based on his sister’s death. This painting evolved into six paintings with that title, which record the moment before the passing of his older sister. These six paintings were created over more than forty years, between 1885 through 1926. They all depict variant images of the same scene; his sister lying ill in bed with his aunt kneeling beside her.

In 1889, Munch moved to Paris, and one of his paintings was shown at the Paris Exposition that year. He spent his time at exhibitions, galleries, and museums. Later that year his father died, and Munch returned to Oslo. While he was there, he arranged for a large loan from a wealthy Norwegian art collector and assumed financial responsibility for his family from then on. Munch’s paintings during this time were largely of tavern scenes and bright cityscapes, and he experimented with different painting styles. Around this time, his work was shown at exhibitions in Oslo and also in Berlin. In 1892, he moved to Berlin, where he became involved with an international circle of writers and artists, and he stayed there for four years.

In 1893, Munch created the first version of his most well-known painting The Scream. This is Munch’s most famous work and one of the most recognizable paintings in all art history. It has been widely interpreted as representing the universal anxiety of modern man. Painted with broad bands of garish color and simplified forms, it reduces the agonized figure to a garbed skull in the throes of an emotional crisis.

There are several versions of this famous painting: two pastels, two oil paintings, and a lithograph. Pastel versions and the lithograph version were created in 1895. The second oil painting was completed in 1910. The original inspiration for this painting occurred while Munch had been out for a walk at sunset when suddenly the setting sun’s light turned the clouds “a blood red,” and he sensed an “infinite scream passing through nature.”

In 1908, Munch’s anxiety, which was compounded by excessive drinking, became more acute, and he began to suffer from hallucinations and feelings of persecution. This led to an eight-month hospital stay, where he underwent psychotherapy that stabilized his mind, and when he returned home his artwork was transformed. It became more colorful and less pessimistic. There was also more interest in his work after this dark night of the soul, and museums began to purchase his paintings. He was made a Knight of the Royal St. Olav — a Norwegian Order of Chivalry— “for services in art.” In 1912, he had his first American exhibit in New York.

Munch stopped drinking, and he produced portraits of friends and patrons. He also created landscapes and scenes of people at work and play, using a new optimistic style— broad, loose brushstrokes of vibrant color with frequent use of white space. With more income Munch was able to purchase several properties, giving him new vistas for his art, and he was finally able to provide for his family.

Munch spent the last two decades of his life largely in solitude at his estate in Oslo. Many of his late paintings celebrate farm life, including several in which his horse served as a model. Munch died in 1944, at the age of 80. After Munch died, many of his works were bequeathed to the city of Oslo, which built the Munch Museum. The museum houses the largest collection of his work in the world and holds around 1,100 paintings, 4,500 drawings, and 18,000 prints.

In 1974, a biographical film was made about Munch’s life called Edvard Munch. In 1994, the 1893 version of The Scream was stolen from the National Gallery in Oslo but was later recovered. Then in 2004, the 1910 version of the painting was stolen from the Munch Museum in Oslo, and it was recovered in 2006 with some damage. In 2012, the 1895 pastel version of  The Scream sold for $119,922,500, and that is the only version of the painting not held by a Norwegian museum.

Some of the quotes that Edvard Munch is known for include:

From my rotting body, flowers shall grow, and I am in them, and that is eternity.

Nature is not only all that is visible to the eye… it also includes the inner pictures of the soul.

I was walking along a path with two friends – the sun was setting – suddenly the sky turned blood red – I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence – there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city – my friends walked on, and I stood there trembling with anxiety – and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature.

The camera will never compete with the brush and palette until such time as photography can be taken to Heaven or Hell.

My fear of life is necessary to me, as is my illness. Without anxiety and illness, I am a ship without a rudder. My art is grounded in reflections over being different from others. My sufferings are part of myself and my art. They are indistinguishable from me, and their destruction would destroy my art. I want to keep those sufferings.

I felt as if there were invisible threads connecting us— I felt the invisible strands of her hair still winding around me— and thus as she disappeared completely beyond the sea— I still felt it, felt the pain where my heart was bleeding— because the threads could not be severed.

Your face encompasses the beauty of the whole earth. Your lips, as red as ripening fruit, gently part as if in pain. It is the smile of a corpse. Now the hand of death touches life. The chain is forged that links the thousand families that are dead to the thousand generations to come.

by David Jay Brown