Barely visible in the top left corner of one of the world’s most famous paintings are the words, “Could only have been painted by a madman!” Curators and art historians have wondered for years who wrote it.
After decades of debate, experts confirmed this week that the artist himself, Edvard Munch, is responsible for the inscription on his most famous work, “The Scream”.
According to the National Museum of Norway, a Danish art critic first saw the inscription at an exhibition in Copenhagen in 1904 – thinking a member of the public had written it as an act of vandalism.
New infrared scans, which do not affect the painting, have shown that Munch left the small sentence on the corner of the painting, written in pencil after the work was already finished. The museum analyzed the manuscript and compared it with Munch’s diaries and letters from that time.
“The writing is without a doubt Munch’s,” said Mai Britt Guleng, curator at the National Museum. “The manuscript itself, as well as the events that took place in 1895 when Munch first showed the painting in Norway, all point in the same direction.”
Annar Bjorgli / The National Museum
The museum confirmed the origin of the inscription as the painting is undergoing extensive conservation in preparation for installation in Oslo, Munch’s home city, next year.
“The writing has always been visible to the naked eye, but it was very difficult to interpret,” said Thierry Ford, curator of paintings at the National Museum. “Through a microscope you can see that the pencil lines are physically on top of the paint and were applied after the painting was finished.”
After “The Scream” debuted in 1895, Munch received strong criticism, including from the art community, and a medical student, Johan Scharffenberg, who questioned his mental state during a debate where Munch was present.
Henrik Grosch, then director of the Norwegian Museum of Decorative Arts and Design, wrote that Munch’s paintings showed that one can no longer consider Munch as a serious man with a normal brain.
Munch referred to the comments in his notes for years, clearly deeply hurt by the statements.
“The theory is that Munch wrote this after hearing Scharffenberg’s judgment about his mental health sometime in or after 1895,” Guleng said of the inscription. “It is reasonable to assume that he did it quite shortly after, during or after the exhibition.”
The National Museum / Børre Høstland
The expressionist painting is now widely celebrated in the modern era and is considered an enduring representation of fear and dread. In his diary, Munch wrote that the painting was inspired by “a fit of melancholy.”
Both Munch’s father and grandfather suffered from depression and his sister was admitted to Gaustad Psychiatric Hospital. Munch was hospitalized after a nervous breakdown in 1908.
“The inscription can be read as an ironic comment, but at the same time as an expression of the artist’s vulnerability,” said Guleng. “Writing on the finished painting shows that creating was a continuous process for Munch.”
The painting, which is one of four, has rarely been seen since it was briefly stolen nearly 20 years ago. A pastel version in 2021 sold for nearly $ 120 million at a Sotheby’s auction in New York – a world record at the time.