Sera sulla Karl Johan

This is the main street of Kristiania, the city we now call Oslo, on an ordinary evening in 1892. A crowd comes down Karl Johan toward you, well dressed, out for the customary evening promenade. And every face is a pale mask with wide dark eyes, drained of expression, floating above the black clothes. Munch painted this the year before The Scream, and you can already feel that painting coming. He had walked this street himself expecting to meet a woman he loved, and she never came, and the memory of standing alone in a moving crowd stayed with him. Look to the right edge, away from the tide of faces, and there is a single small figure with its back to us, walking off in the other direction, alone.