Edvard Munch, The Scream

Sue Prideaux (1) gives the following account of the circumstances in which Munch painted “The Scream”:

“All year he had been striving towards the final painting, developing the composition. In September, Norway called him home to paint. He wrote how the visionary experience of The Scream came to him:

 

I went along the road with two friends—
The sun set
Suddenly the sky became blood—and I felt the breath of sadness
A tearing pain beneath my heart
I stopped—leaned against the fence—deathly tired
Clouds over the fjord of blood dripped reeking with blood
My friends went on but I just stood trembling with an open wound
in my breast trembling with anxiety I heard a huge extraordinary
scream pass through nature. (2)

 

The experience came to him high up on Ekeberg at sunset. Ekeberg is to the east of Oslo. It is the only point from which one can look across and see the city Munch now hated, spread across the water, as Christ saw the city spread before Him from a high place, when the Devil tempted Him. What looks like a road in the painting was in fact a path, and the railing is a safety railing, though it looks like a bridge. It does not look very different today, if one blanks out the industry round the docks the same silhouette of Oslo can be seen bulging out.

The main slaughterhouse for the city was up there, and so was Gaustad, the city’s madhouse, in which Laura had been incarcerated. He had probably gone up there to visit her; there was no other discernible reason. The screams of the animals being slaughtered in combination with the screams of the insane were reported to be a terrible thing to hear.”

References

(1) Prideaux, S., Edvard Munch, Behind the Scream, Yale University Press, 2007.

(2) Quoted in Heller, R., Edvard Munch: The Scream, Penguin, London 1973, (the quote translated by Sue Prideaux).

The Blog “PopSpots” has an article showing the actual location of ‘The scream’ on the side of Valhallveien road on a hill called Ekeberg Hill above Oslo in Norway.

This pigment analysis is based on the work of British and Norwegian scientists (1).

1 Yellow, lower right: cadmium yellow, barium sulfate, vermilion, charcoal black, and organic yellow lake.

2 Orange, upper right: chrome yellow and gypsum.
3 Red, upper right: Vermilion and gypsum.

4 Red, upper left: Vermilion and gypsum.
5 Red, upper left: Vermilion and gypsum

6 Turquoise, upper left: viridian, lead white, chrome yellow.

7 Dark blue to the right of the main figure: artificial ultramarine, zinc white, clay.

8 Red from vertical streak: vermilion, red lake.

9 Green at right: Viridian

10 White crayon, upper left: lead white and charcoal black.

11 Pink crayon: vermilion and lead white.

12 Dirty white, upper left: lead white and zinc white.

13 Blue crayon, to the right of the man in the top hat: artificial ultramarine and gypsum.

14 Green crayon to the right of the main figure: Viridian, zinc yellow, Prussian blue, and clay.

15 Yellow from the rail: cadmium yellow.

16 Brown from the rail, lower right: artificial ultramarine, charcoal black, and red ochre.

16 Brown from signature: red ochre and red lake.

References

(1) Brian Singer, Trond Aslaksby, Biljana Topalova-Casadiego and Eva Storevik Tveit, Investigation of Materials Used by Edvard Munch, Studies in Conservation 55, 2010, pp. 274-292.

(2) U. Plahter and B. Topalova-Casadiego, The Scream by Edvard Munch: painting techniques and coloring materials, Studying Old Masters’ paintings, Ed. M. Spring, The National Gallery Technical Bulletin, 2008, pp. 244–252.

(3) a) Hilda Deborah, Sony George, Jon Yngve Hardeberg, Pigment Mapping of the Scream (1893) Based on Hyperspectral Imaging, Volume 8509 of the series Lecture Notes in Computer Science pp 247-256. See also the page on Multispectral Imaging on this website.
b) Hilda Deborah, Sony George, and Jon Yngve Hardeberg, Pigment mapping of The Scream (1893) based on hyperspectral imaging, Presentation of The Norwegian Colour and Visual Computing Laboratory. Available as pdf. See also the page on Multispectral Imaging on this website.
(c) Deborah H., George S., Hardeberg J.Y. (2014) Pigment Mapping of the Scream (1893) Based on Hyperspectral Imaging. In: Elmoataz A., Lezoray O., Nouboud F., Mammass D. (eds) Image and Signal Processing. ICISP 2014. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 8509. Springer, Cham, DOI https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319

(4) Topalova-Casadiego, Biljana; Plahter, Unn, Cadmium Yellow in ‘The Scream’ painted by Edward Munch, in Studying Old Master Paintings: Technology and Practice. The National Gallery Technical Bulletin 30th Anniversary Conference, Postprints of the Conference (London, 16-18 September 2009), edited by M. Spring, London 2011.

Video Lecture at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC). (The discoloration of ‘The Scream’ is discussed from 27:30 until about 32:40 minutes into the video)

(1) Temkin, A.,  The Scream: Edvard Munch,  Museum of Modern Art 2012.

(2) Prideaux, S., Edvard Munch, Behind the Scream, Yale University Press, 2007.

(3) Heller, R., Edvard Munch: The Scream, Penguin, London 1973.

(4)  Johan H. Langaard and Sigurd Willoch, Edvard Munch, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1965. Available online and as pdf.

(5) Plahter, Unn. “Munch’s Paintings: Scientific Research Both Recent and in Retrospect.” Public paintings by Edvard Munch and his contemporaries – change and conservation challenges, Archeype Publications (2015): 3–35.

Edvard Munch, ‘The Scream‘, Website of Museum of Modern Art with several audio files on the art of Edvard Munch.