On January 22 , 1892 , Norwegian artistEdvard Munchwrote a fatal entree in his diary . He was in Nice , France , at the prison term , seemingly recalling a walk he ’d once taken back in Kristiania ( now Oslo ) .
“ I was walking along the route with two friends — the sun was set — I felt a undulation of sadness —— the Sky suddenly plow blood - redI stopped , incline against the fenceTired to demise — await out overThe flaming clouds like blood and brand — The down - black fjord and urban center —— My friends walk on — I stoodthere quaking with angst — and Ifelt as though a vast , endlessScream passed through nature ”
It ’s universally accepted that thispassage , translated from Norwegian , is relate to Munch ’s Expressionist masterpieceThe Scream . On one version of the painting ( there are four ) , heinscribeda variation of the text along the bottom of the figure .
What expert still debate is whether Munch was recounting a computer storage of his own or simply imagining a scene . He oftenpennedliterary sketch and prose poetry to complement his fine art , and it ’s exclusively possible that the blood - crimson sky above the blue - opprobrious fiord originated in his mind .
Perhaps the most convincing financial support for the possibility that Munch was revolutionise by tangible life sentence is thesetting ofThe Scream : It look nearly indistinguishable toValhallveien , a fence - line road on Ekeberg Hill with a splendid view of Oslo and its fiord . But even if we assume that the painter did give birth witness to such a striking sunset there , we ’re leave behind with another mystery .
What on Earth caused it ?
Ash Interference
In 2000 , climatologist Alan Robock put forth his best shot : avolcanic volcanic eruption .
When a volcano erupt , sulfur dioxide skyrocket into the stratosphere and footle there in the kind of lilliputian particle call sulfate aerosol bomb , which — along with ash — can be borne across the globe by wind . As the sunshine sets , its rays musttravel fartherthrough the atmosphere than they do during the day , and we ’re only able to see the longer wavelengths of light : yellow and red , as opposed to bluing . Ash and sulfate aerosolsmake that journey even hard , so volcanic sunset can be especially bright red .
Though Robock proposed the June 1892 eruption of Indonesia ’s Mount Awu as the possible reason of those “ flaming cloud like parentage and swords , ” Munch ’s original diary entry predate that event , and Robock eventually abandoned the estimation in favour of one suggest by a deuce-ace of investigator in 2004 : Krakatoa .
TheAugust 1883 outbreak of Krakatoa , an Indonesian volcanic island , is one ofhistory ’s most devastating volcanic eructation , with a expiry toll of more or less 36,000 people and an ash cloud that spanned some 275 miles . Blazing sunsets were seen all over the world for years after the disaster — including some in Norway .
The researcher , led by astronomerDonald Olson , excavate theme from the UK ’s Royal Society with records of fiery twilights in Oslo from belated November 1883 into the following February . During that stretch , Munch was a barely-20 - year - honest-to-goodness bohemian splittingstudio spacein Oslo with several peer . This bohemian geological era would afterwards barrack many painting in his collectionThe Frieze of Life , which , as Olson et al . channelize out , includesThe Scream .
For years , the Krakatoa theory enjoyed supremacy as the likeliest origin story for Munch ’s greatest giving to art — until 2017 , when three Norwegian researchers get onwards with a winkle alternative .
Making Waves
If temperature in the stratosphere fall below the ice hoarfrost point — around – 120 ° degree Fahrenheit or so — water particle can freeze and formnacreous clouds , ormother - of - pearl clouds . ( Nacreouscomes fromnacre , another term formother - of - pearl . ) They get their name from the opalescence created when those ice crystals diffract light , which can make for a middling arresting sunset .
Because nacreous clouds can only be in such icy stipulation , they ’re not often seen outside polar realm . Butnot oftenisn’tnever — and observations of nacreous clouds in southern Norway were memorialise on a number of occasions throughout the eighties and other 1890s .
Norwegian meteorologist Svein M. Fikke and his fellow researcherspositedthat Munch may have been among the observers in Oslo at some percentage point during that era , and the surmisal was shortly champion by other investigators . Even Robock change his strain : He co - authored a2018 paperwith atmospheric physicist Fred Prata and environmental author Richard Hamblyn in which they demonstrate through color psychoanalysis thatThe Scream ’s sky more intimately matches a female parent - of - pearl sunset than a volcanic one .
One salient point on the board for pearlescent clouds is that they , like the layers inThe Scream , are quite rippled . “ This is loosely not seen in violent sunsets and volcanic sunsets , where the cloudless sky tends to be variegated and the sky with clouds tends to have variation but little or no waviness , ” Prata et al . write . They also observe that if Munchwasillustrating pearlescent clouds , The Scream“in all likelihood would represent the first graphical depicting of a type of swarm largely strange to weather forecasting at the time . ”
The researchers did acknowledge the impracticality of apply scientific color analysis to Expressionist art . Maybe Munch ’s palette lacked what he demand to duplicate the chromaticity of a volcanic sundown , or perhaps he just never intended to twin them . After all , The Screamis much more concerned with depicting a mental state than a landscape painting . Not that an artwork ca n’t do both — and it ’s operose to see Munch ’s magnum opus next to nacreous clouds without note the resemblance .
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