The Scream, 1893   Tempera and pastel on board. 91 x 73.5 cm.  
Signed lower left: E. Munch 1893     Presented in 1910 by Olaf Schou  NG.M.00939
     Edvard Munch's most famous work has gained enormously in popularity, especially since World War II. Perhaps the existential fear here rendered by the artist has become more widespread in recent decades?
     In the foreground, on a road with a railing along it, we see a figure: his hands raised to his head, eyes staring, mouth gaping. Further back are two gentlemen in top hats, and behind them a landscape of fjord and hills. The first time Munch described the experience which gave rise to this painting was in Nice, writing in his literary diary. The entry for 22 January 1892 reads:
  

   "I was walking along the road with two friends.
   The sun was setting.
   I felt a breath of melancholy -
   Suddenly the sky turned blood-red.
   I stopped, and leaned against the railing, deathly tired -
   looking out across the flaming clouds that hung like blood and a sword
   over the blue-black fjord and town.
   My friends walked on - I stood there, trembling with fear.
   And I sensed a great, infinite scream pass through nature."
  
When art historians call Munch, together with artists like Van Gogh, "the founder of Expressionism", it is because of a picture such as The Scream. The work depicts not so much an incident or a landscape as a state of mind. The drama is an inner one, and yet the subject is firmly anchored in the topography of Oslo - the view is from Nordstrand towards the two bays at the head of the Oslofjord, with Holmenkollen in the background. The evening landscape has been distilled into an abstract rhythm of wavy lines. The road with its railing, leading diagonally inwards, creates a powerful pull of perspective in the composition, and intensifies the disquieting atmosphere in the picture.
       Several sketches and preparatory studies for this painting survive. The motif also features in Munch's graphic works.
   Armed Robbers Steal Munch's 'The Scream' in Oslo