Norwegian 1863-1944 Edvard Munch Locations Edvard Munch (pronounced , December 12, 1863 ?C January 23, 1944) was a Norwegian Symbolist painter, printmaker, and an important forerunner of expressionistic art. His best-known composition, The Scream is one of the pieces in a series titled The Frieze of Life, in which Munch explored the themes of life, love, fear, death, and melancholy. Edvard Munch was born in a rustic farmhouse in the village of Adalsbruk in Loten, Norway to Christian Munch, the son of a prominent priest. Christian was a doctor and medical officer, who married Laura Cathrine Bjølstad, a woman half his age, in 1861. Edvard had an older sister, Johanne Sophie (born 1862), and three younger siblings: Peter Andreas (born 1865), Laura Cathrine (born 1867), and Inger Marie (born 1868). Both Sophie and Edvard appear to have gotten their art talent from their mother. Edvard Munch was related to painter Jacob Munch (1776?C1839) and historian Peter Andreas Munch (1810?C1863). The family moved to Kristiania (now Oslo) in 1864 when Christian Munch was appointed medical officer at Akershus Fortress. Edvard??s mother died of tuberculosis in 1868, as did Munch's favorite sister Johanne Sophie in 1877. After their mother's death, the Munch siblings were raised by their father and by their aunt Karen. Often ill for much of the winters and kept out of school, Edvard would draw to keep himself occupied. He also received tutoring from his school mates and his aunt. Christian Munch also instructed his son in history and literature, and entertained the children with vivid ghost stories and tales of Edgar Allan Poe. Christian??s positive behavior toward his children, however, was overshadowed by his morbid pietism. Munch wrote, ??My father was temperamentally nervous and obsessively religious??to the point of psychoneurosis. From him I inherited the seeds of madness. The angles of fear, sorrow, and death stood by my side since the day I was born.?? Christian reprimanded his children by telling them that their mother was looking down from heaven and grieving over their misbehavior. The oppressive religious milieu, plus Edvard??s poor health and the vivid ghost stories, helped inspire macabre visions and nightmares in Edvard, who felt death constantly advancing on him. One of Munch's younger sisters was diagnosed with mental illness at an early age. Of the five siblings only Andreas married, but he died a few months after the wedding. Munch would later write, "I inherited two of mankind's most frightful enemies??the heritage of consumption and insanity." Christian Munch??s military pay was very low, and his attempts at developing a private side practice failed, keeping his family in perrenial poverty. They moved frequently from one sordid flat to another. Munch??s early drawings and watercolors depicted these interiors, and the individual objects such as medicine bottles and drawing implements, plus some landscapes. By his teens, art dominated Munch??s interests. At thirteen, Munch has his first exposure to other artists at the newly formed Art Association, were he admired the work of the Norwegian landscape school, and where he returned to copy the paintings, and soon he began to paint in oils.  Related Paintings of Edvard Munch :. | Spring Day on Karl Johann | The Forest | Gentlewoman on the Bridge | Sun | Sick |
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Octave Tassaert
Paris 1800-1874 was a French painter of portraits and genre, religious, historical and allegorical paintings, as well as a lithographer and engraver, though this family was of Flemish origin. He was the grandson of the sculptor Jean-Pierre-Antoine Tassaert. Octave's first artistic training came from his father Jean-Joseph-François Tassaert (1765-c. 1835) and his older brother Paul (?-1855), before he was apprenticed to the engraver Alexis-François Girard (1787-1870). Next he studied at the École des Beaux-Arts (1817-25) from 1817 through 1825, under Guillaume Guillon-Lethi??re, but never won the school's Prix de Rome. Winning popular but not critical success, his works showing poor people's lives were felt melodramatic by critics but acclaimed by the public. His submission to the 1855 World Exhibition was well received by the critics, but Octave ceased to exhibit after the 1857 Salon, withdrawing more and more from the formal art world. Collectors of his works included Alfred Bruyas and Alexandre Dumas, fils, but in 1863 Octave stopped painting altogether and tried to become a poet (though none of his works are extant),
Frans van Leemputten
painted Aan de Schelde-arm in 1884
Neroccio
1446-1500 Italian