Edvard Munch paintings, including "The Scream", have universal appeal in addition to their highly personal meaning. Munch's works are now represented in numerous major museums and galleries in Norway and abroad. His cabin, "the Happy House", was given to the municipality of Åsgårdstrand in 1944; it serves as a small Munch Museum. The inventory has been maintained exactly as he left it. One version of "The Scream" was stolen from the National Gallery in 1994. In 2004, another version of "The Scream", along with one of "Madonna", was stolen from the Munch Museum in a daring daylight robbery. All were eventually recovered,
Edvard Munch grandfather, my father…Kill yourself and then it's over. Why live?" Munch's paintings of the following year included sketchy tavern scenes and a series of bright cityscapes in which he experimented with the pointillist style of Georges Seurat. By 1892, Munch formulated his characteristic, and original, Synthetist aesthetic, as seen in "Melancholy" (1891), in which color is the symbol-laden element. Considered by the artist and journalist Christian Krohg as the first Symbolist painting by a Norwegian artist, "Melancholy" was exhibited in 1891 at the Autumn Exhibition in Oslo. In 1892, Adelsteen Normann, on behalf of the Union of Berlin Artists, invited