1. The Paintings of Edvard Munch

2. The Scream 1893 Is the lurid red sky a symbol, a depiction of an actual sky or both?

3. Note the similarity of the sky in Angst and in Despair. All painted between 1893 - 1894. BUT - is this a "real sky"?

4. Melancholy, 1892 First notice the similarity in the clouds - is this characteristic of the clouds seen in Oslo?

5. One group of modern sleuths (Olson, Doescher,Olson 2004) claim that Munch's skies are real but are from his memory of the sunsets of November 1883 - February 1884 – 10 years earlier! Why is that?..... “One evening I was walking out along a mountain road near Christiania (Oslo).. The sun went down … it was as if a flaming sword of blood slashed open the vault of heaven – the atmosphere turned to blood - with glaring tongues of fire … I felt something like a great scream – and truly I heard a great scream. (Munch’s own description of what prompted the painting) In 1891 Munch’s friend Christian Skredsvig writes… For a long time he wanted to paint the memory of a sunset. Red as blood. No, it was coagulated blood.

6. August 26,1883, the island volcano of Krakatoa in Indonesia, exploded with devastating fury. The eruption was one of the most catastrophic natural disasters in recorded history. The effects were experienced on a global scale. The explosion was heard more than 3000 miles away. Volcanic dust blew into the upper atmosphere affecting incoming solar radiation and the earth's weather for several years. Remarkable sunsets were seen around the globe and in Europe between November 1883 and February 1884.