Edvard Munch nature." He later described the personal anguish behind the painting, "for several years I was almost mad… You know my picture, 'The Scream?' I was stretched to the limit—nature was screaming in my blood… After that I gave up hope ever of being able to love again." In summing up the painting's effects, author Martha Tedeschi has stated: "Whistler's Mother", Wood's "American Gothic", Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa" and Edvard Munch's "The Scream" have all achieved something that most paintings—regardless of their art historical importance, beauty, or monetary value—have not: they communicate a specific meaning almost immediately to almost every
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 ;