Edvard Munch government. Munch was 76 years old. With nearly an entire collection of his art in the second floor of his house, Munch lived in fear of a Nazi confiscation. Seventy-one of the paintings previously taken by the Nazis had been returned to Norway through purchase by collectors (the other eleven were never recovered), including "The Scream" and "The Sick Child", and they too were hidden from the Nazis. Munch died in his house at Ekely near Oslo on 23 January 1944, about a month after his 80th birthday. His Nazi-orchestrated funeral suggested to Norwegians that he was a Nazi sympathizer,
Melancholy (Edvard Munch) represented by the undulating shoreline and skylines that extend toward the left. Critics suggest that there are also erotic allusions, perhaps in the presence of the moon reflected on the water. The landscape represents Asgardstrand's beach where Munch spent his summers from 1889. "Melancholy" was exhibited in 1891 at the Autumn Exhibition in Oslo. The artist and journalist Christian Krohg credited it as the first Symbolist painting by a Norwegian artist. Munch painted more than one version of the composition in 1891. A version completed in 1892–93 is in the National Gallery, Oslo. Melancholy (Edvard Munch) Melancholy (Norwegian: Melankoli ;