Seated Nude and Grotesque Masque

Munch was living in Berlin when he painted this, and he was notorious there. The exhibition the city's artists' association had invited him to hold in November 1892 was voted shut after a week, the row filled the German papers, and the scandal made his name in Germany.

The years around it were the ones in which he was hardest on his materials. This canvas carries oil and casein together, casein being a binder made from milk protein that dries flat and chalky and sinks into the cloth rather than sitting on top of it. He wanted surfaces that looked thin and unfinished, and he would let the weave, and sometimes bare canvas, stay visible. Within weeks of that closure, 11 of the Berlin painters who had backed him broke away to exhibit on their own.