Masterpieces · 3 min read
The Scream: Four Versions and a Blood-Red Sky
December 2025
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It has been used on political posters and in horror films, and it even has its own emoji.1 But The Scream began as a few lines in a notebook, written by a Norwegian painter after a walk at sunset.
A walk above the fjord
Edvard Munch was born on 12 December 1863 in Løten, Norway. His mother died when he was five and his eldest sister when he was 14, both of tuberculosis.2 Before he painted The Scream, he described its subject in a prose poem in one of his notebooks:1
“I was walking along the road with two friends – the sun was setting – suddenly the sky turned blood red … and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature.”
Edvard Munch, notebook, 1892 (MM T 2367), translated by the Nasjonalmuseet
The place is real: the fjord of Kristiania, today's Oslo, seen from Ekeberg hill. The two figures strolling on the left are the two friends of the poem.1
From a man in a hat to a face nobody can name
A year earlier, in 1892, Munch had painted almost the same picture, Despair: same colors, format and landscape. The difference is the main figure. In Despair it is a clearly defined man in a hat and coat. In The Scream it has become a mysterious presence, turned to face us.1
Is it a man or a woman? A skull or a face? Those questions make the picture a visual enigma, and the head-on pose makes it confrontational.1
Why it changed painting
Munch worked on the motif for a long time, yet the painting looks fast and spontaneous. That handling, with its vivid, unrealistic colors, made form and content express the same thing.1 The Nasjonalmuseet sees the work as a turning point from Symbolism to the Expressionism of the 1900s.1
It belongs to the same family as Van Gogh's Starry Night, painted four years earlier: a landscape bent by feeling. Both lead into the story of modern art, and later to the dream worlds of Surrealism.
“Can only be painted by a madman!”
At the top left of the 1893 painting, a barely legible pencil note reads: “Can only be painted by a madman!” For years, researchers thought a visitor had written it. In 2020, an infrared and handwriting study by the Nasjonalmuseet and the Munch Museum concluded that Munch wrote it himself.1
Drama, handled with care
An intense picture needs room to breathe. Give it a wall of its own, in a hallway or a study rather than above the bed, and let deep wall colors frame it.
One strong image is enough: surround it with calm.
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Moods and dreams
Four atmospheric canvases with a touch of mystery.
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Read the storyNotes & sources
- Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo, "Edvard Munch, The Scream, 1893", NG.M.00939 (description and catalogue text by Vibeke Waallann Hansen, 2022). nasjonalmuseet.no
- Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Edvard Munch". britannica.com