Munch | The Scream
Munch | The Scream
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- 100% hand-painted oil on canvas
- Delivered Framed & Ready to Hang!
- We stretch (Gallery Wrap) every canvas
- Hanging wire is attached to the back
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About The Scream by Edvard Munch
Munch described the moment it came from. He was walking a road above Oslo at sunset with two friends, feeling tired and unwell, when he stopped at a railing. The sky turned blood red. His friends walked on. He stood there trembling, and felt, as he put it, an infinite scream passing through nature.
That last detail changes how you read the picture. The figure is not screaming. It has heard a scream — one coming from the world itself — and has clamped its hands over its ears against it. The two small figures further up the walkway have noticed nothing.
Munch made the image four times over seventeen years, in paint, pastel and crayon, and as a lithograph that spread it worldwide. He also pencilled a sentence into the sky of the 1893 painting, so faint it went unexplained for a century: Can only have been painted by a madman. In 2021 the National Museum in Oslo confirmed the handwriting was Munch's own.
The Scream at a glance
- Artist: Edvard Munch (1863–1944)
- Painted: 1893, with later versions to 1910
- Movement: Expressionism / Symbolism
- Originals: National Museum, Oslo; Munch Museum, Oslo
- Medium: Tempera and oil on cardboard, 91 × 73.5 cm (1893 version)
Common questions about The Scream
How many versions of The Scream are there?
Four, all by Munch. Two are paintings, from 1893 and 1910, both in Oslo. One is a pastel of 1895, which sold at auction in 2012 for US$119.9 million and is privately held. The fourth is a crayon drawing. He also made a lithograph, which is why the image spread so widely.
Is the figure screaming?
No — and this is the most common misunderstanding of the picture. Munch's own account describes hearing a scream pass through nature while he stood at the railing. The figure has its hands over its ears, shutting the sound out. The scream is coming from the landscape, not the person.
Where is The Scream?
The 1893 painting is in the National Museum in Oslo; the 1910 version is in the Munch Museum, also in Oslo. Both have been stolen and recovered — the first in 1994, the second in an armed raid in 2004, recovered two years later with some damage.
Why is the sky red?
Munch said he saw it that way. One widely discussed theory is that he was remembering the extraordinary red sunsets seen across Europe for months after the eruption of Krakatoa in 1883. Others read it as purely psychological. The two explanations are not incompatible.
Where was it painted?
The setting is a road on Ekeberg hill overlooking the Oslofjord, on the edge of what was then Kristiania. The railing and the view are real; the sky is not.
How much is The Scream worth?
The pastel version sold in 2012 for US$119.9 million, briefly the highest price ever paid at auction for a work of art. The two paintings belong to Norwegian public collections and are not for sale.
Own a hand-painted Scream
This is not a print. Every painting we sell is reproduced in oils on canvas, by hand, by professional artists — no giclée, no computer-generated technique.
Everything in this picture is made from the same stroke. The sky, the fjord, the hills and the figure itself are all built from long undulating bands running in the same rhythm, so the person is not standing in the landscape so much as dissolving into it — the same wave passes through the sky, through the water and through the skull. That reading only holds while you can see the individual strokes doing it. Reproduction smooths them into flat fields of colour, the figure separates cleanly from its background again, and the picture becomes a man on a bridge instead of a man coming apart. Painted by hand in oils, the stroke stays visible and the dissolution stays visible with it.
- A range of sizes — choose yours above.
- Framed and ready to hang, gallery wrap, or rolled canvas if you would rather frame it yourself.
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Framing Options: You have 3 choices
Option 1. Choose an outer frame - see images below.
You only need to choose one and the painting will be sent to you framed and ready to hang.
* Below is an example of a customer who chose the Gold Ornate frame
Option 2: Choose a Gallery Wrap Stretched Painting.
If you want the frameless modern gallery wrap look then you only need to choose Stretched Gallery Wrap from the finish option dropdown.
You receive your stretched gallery wrap painting ready to hang - with a hanging wire attached behind.
The back of the Stretched Gallery Wrap looks like the image below - it has a hanging wire!
Option 3: Choose Canvas Only if you want to frame the painting yourself.
Your painting will be sent to you in an art tube - you can then frame it yourself or take it to your local framer.
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