Edvard Munch was born in 1863 on a farm in Loten, Norway, the second of five children. His father was a doctor who treated Kristiana's poor; he was a stern, devout man who moved his family to Kristiana when Edvard was a baby. His mother died of tuberculosis when he was five. His father became melancholy and reclusive, spending days and evenings in his own room in prayer. Munch himself was often ill. His elder sister, Sophie, died of tuberculosis when she was fifteen and Munch was a year younger.In 1881 he entered art school. The canvases he painted at first were similar to the dark rich realistic ones developed in Paris by Courbet and the early Manet. He became involved with a revolutionary social group that advocated free love and had his first sexual experience.His earliest experiences with romance were dismal failures and as a result he never married. His painful affair with Tulla Larsen, the spirited daughter of a prominent family, ended with a self-inflicted gun-shot wound that took off part of a finger on his left hand. For the rest of his life intimacy was reduced to brief encounters with hotel maids and prostitutes.He made his first visit to Paris in 1885. The decade from 1890 to 1900 was Munch's most intense and creative period. For three years, 1889, 1890 and 1891 he obtained scholarships to study in France, but he returned to Norway in the summers, renting a summer home at Aasgaardstand.The sanctimonious journalists in Kristiana (renamed Oslo in 1924) would call the man and his work insane during much of Munch's life. In 1908 he suffered a nervous breakdown, spending six to eight months in a Danish Sanatorium. Afterward, he was a changed man. He gave up cigarettes and liquor and settled permanently in Norway. Fame and funds had come to him by then. He had produced a prodigious amount of work until his death in 1944 and in 1963 a museum devoted entirely to his paintings opened in Oslo.Written and submitted by Jean Ershler Schatz, artist and researcher from Laguna Woods, California.Sources include:Hear the Scream by David d'Arcy in Art & Antiques Magazine, October 1995;Article by Piri Halasz in Smithsonian Magazine (date unknown)Article by Robert Hughes in Newsweek Magazine, November 27, 1978The Heart's Blood by D.M.Thomas in Art & Antiques Magazine, January 1993

Fair-Poor. It is framed between two pieces of acrylic glazing showing both the back and front of the piece. There is some bleeding or aging marks on the front and the back of the piece.The piece is worn throughout, with folds and some scratches. It has various blemishes from aging. The piece Needs restoration.

15.187 x 11.187 x 3 in

2 lb