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
Christmas in the Brothel Christmas in the Brothel Christmas in the Brothel () is an oil-on-canvas painting by Norwegian painter Edvard Munch. The Expressionist painting was completed in 1903–04 and is housed at the Munch Museum in Oslo. The painting was done at a difficult time for Munch: a commission for a portrait in Hamburg (of a Senator Holthusen, the father in law of Munch's patron Max Linde) had come to naught because of disagreements. As a result, Munch suffered anxieties, which he attempted to manage with alcohol. A visit to a brothel in Lübeck is supposedly the background to "Christmas in the Brothel",