La Tempête

Munch painted The Storm in 1893, the same year he first put down the figure clutching its head that became The Scream. He was working from summers spent at Asgardstrand, a small Norwegian shore town, and this is its beach at night under a gale. A cluster of women press their hands to their ears against the wind, and one stands apart in white, catching what little light there is. The storm is as much an inner one as a real gale, part of a series Munch was building about love, anxiety and death. Behind the figures the windows of a house still glow, the one warm thing on a dark coast.