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The Scream

Artist: Edvard Munch (1863–1944)
Date: 1893
Dimensions: 91 x 73.5 cm
Medium: Tempera and crayon on cardboard
Location: National Museum, Oslo, Norway

The Scream shows a ghostly, skull-like figure on a bridge, clasping its head and opening its mouth in a silent cry, beneath a blood-red, swirling sky. Behind, two figures walk away, unaware.

A closer look

Munch based the image on an experience during a sunset walk near Oslo: the sky suddenly turned red, and he felt “an infinite scream passing through nature”. The figure is not screaming so much as hearing that scream, covering its ears. The landscape of fjord and hills is reduced to waving lines that seem to vibrate with the same anxiety, while the straight diagonal of the bridge rushes away. Munch made several versions in paint, pastel and print. The image has become a universal symbol of modern anxiety.

History of the painting

This painted version of The Scream, from 1893, was given to the National Gallery in Kristiania (Oslo) in 1910 by the collector Olaf Schou. On 12 February 1994, the morning the Winter Olympics opened in Lillehammer, two thieves climbed a ladder, broke a window and took it from the wall in less than a minute, leaving a note thanking the museum for its poor security. Norwegian police, working with British detectives posing as buyers, recovered it undamaged three months later.

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