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Krakatoa provided backdrop to Munch's scream
Washington
December 11, 2003

For those who have ever wondered why the sky was a lurid red in The Scream - Edvard Munch's painting of modern angst - astronomers have an answer: a volcanic eruption half a world away.

An article published on Tuesday in Sky and Telescope pinpoints the location in Norway where Munch and his friends were walking when the artist saw the blood-red sky depicted in the 1893 painting, and offers an explanation for why it seemed to be aflame.

Donald Olson, a physics and astronomy professor at Texas State University, and his colleagues determined that debris thrown into the atmosphere by the massive eruption on the island of Krakatoa, in modern Indonesia, created vivid red twilights in Europe from November 1883 until February 1884.

The local newspaper in what is now Oslo reported that the phenomenon was widely seen, the astronomers said. The most famous version of The Scream was painted in 1893 as part of The Frieze of Life, a group of works derived from Munch's personal experiences, including the deaths of his mother in 1868 and his sister in 1877.

To reach their conclusion, the astronomers determined Munch's vantage point in the painting. "One of the high points of our research trip to Oslo came when we rounded a bend in the road and realised we were standing in the exact spot where Munch had been 120 years ago," Professor Olson said.

"It was very satisfying to stand in the exact spot where an artist had his experience," he said. "The real importance of finding the location, though, was to determine the direction of view in the painting. We could see that Munch was looking to the south-west - exactly where the Krakatoa twilights appeared in the winter of 1883-84."

- Reuters

This story was found at: http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/12/10/1070732277751.html