The Norwegian artist Edvard Munch was born on this date in 1863.
In 1892, he wrote in his journal: “I was walking along the road with two friends. The sun set. I felt a tinge of melancholy. Suddenly the sky became a bloody red. I stopped, leaned against the railing, dead tired, and I looked at the flaming clouds that hung like blood and a sword over the blue-black fjord and the city. My friends walked on. I stood there, trembling with fright. And I felt a loud, unending scream piercing nature.” The next year, he painted the first of several versions of his most famous painting, The Scream.