The Storm 1893

Stormy skies! The Norwegian painter Edvard Munch (1863-1944) here captures the howling winds of a seaside village. Painted in the same year as his startlingly expressionist painting The Scream (1893), Munch depicts a group of women with their hands raised to their ears in The Storm (1893). One figure, clothed in ghostly white, stands apart from the others. Munch uses his signature streaky brushstrokes to build a soft and abstract composition. The vague and misty outline of the woman in white, standing alone, obscures her identity to build an eerie atmosphere. Against the gloom of the night, her pale dress almost glows, and she becomes the focal point of the painting. The effect is atmospheric – her spectral presence unsettles the viewer, who can imagine the chilling wail of the heavy winds and the roaring of the nearby ocean. Much of Edvard Munch’s art explores subjective themes of anxiety and intense emotion. The abstract nature of this painting, and its lack of an immediately obvious narrative, allows for personal interpretation. Its muted colour palette may communicate a sense of melancholy, yet there are traces of light in the warm glow that emanates from the windows of the house beyond. Perhaps the storm in the painting symbolically echoes Munch’s turbulence of mind? Whatever your interpretation, it is clear that the painting presents a fascinatingly mystical scene. This exemplifies the move towards conveying inner emotion rather than portraying realistic scenes in the art created at the end of the 19th century. Editor: Lucy Jude Grantham