Edvard Munch 1863-1944

Edvard Munch was a Norwegian artist whose brooding and anguished paintings and graphic works, based on personal grief and obsessions, were instrumental in the development of expressionism.
Edvard Munch grew up in Norway's capital, Oslo, then called Christiania. His father, Christian Munch -- brother of the well-known historian P.A. Munch -- was a deeply religious military doctor earning a modest income. His wife, who was 20 years his junior, died of tuberculosis when Edvard was only five years old, and Edvard's older sister, Sophie, died of the disease at the age of 15. Edvard himself was often ill. A younger sister was diagnosed with mental illness at an early age.…