Painter. Evard Munch was a Norwegian painter, who received international recognition in 1893 for his painting of an agonized face, "The Scream." The subject of this painting is a sexless human with hands over its ears, wide-eyed, and mouth opened in a shriek of horror. Painted using oil, tempera, pastel and crayon, "The Scream" is on exhibit at the National Gallery in Oslo. Also called the "Cry," he produced three versions of the painting in different mediums. A pastel-only 1895 version commanded in 2012 at public auction the fourth highest nominal price paid for an artwork: $120 million. In his own unique style, he is one of a few artists that could radically express human emotions on canvas. An expressionist artist, he touched on psychological expressions of the emotions of anxiety, fear, depression, rejection, jealousy, love, hate, and others. Born into a family with a history of mental illness, his father was a physician. When he was five, his thirty-year-old, artistic mother died from tuberculosis, with an aunt taking her place in the household. He was next to the oldest of five children. Nine years later after his mother's death, his fifteen-year-old sister died of tuberculosis. This followed over the years with his brother dying suddenly from pneumonia; his sister becoming mentally ill, spending most of her life institutionalized; and his father dying from a stroke. Like him, his youngest sister survived this ordeal, but never married. During the frigid winters of his childhood, he would become sick with lung problems, thus he was home schooled and began to draw. With no formal education, he received instructions from the Kristiania Bohème, a circle of writers and artists in Kristiania, as Oslo was then called. Later, he studied at what became the Norwegian National Academy of Fine Arts. From 1889 to 1909, he traveled to France and Germany. In Paris he studied, painted and exhibited his work. While in Berlin, he produced 22 paintings, "The Frieze of Life," depicting a series of deeply-felt themes such as love, anxiety, jealousy and betrayal. With an invitation from the Union of Berlin Artists, he exhibited in Berlin in 1902. With his notoriety, he became wealthy. In his travels, he learned about colors and techniques. Leaving Norway freed him to expand his knowledge of painting instead of staying with the traditional. As Munch stated "No longer shall I paint interiors with men reading and women knitting. I will paint living people who breathe and feel and suffer and love." Echoing his beloved older sister's death, his 1894 painting, "Death in the Sick Room" does not focus on a child's death but the suffering faces of those grieving. During this time, he had a romantic encounter that failed; had a self-inflicted gunshot wound, losing a finger on his left hand; and began to drink heavily. After returning to Norway in 1908, he had a mental breakdown hearing hallucinatory voices. He was hospitalized and stopped drinking alcohol. After this episode, his paintings became more positive, but were not as successful monetarily. He produced several self-portraits during this time. Besides his oil paintings and drawings, he produced in different mediums and wood carvings. He lived alone on his estate for the next 27 years. During World War II while Norway was under Nazi occupation, his paintings were not destroyed as other artists' works were. As an elderly man, he continued to paint until shortly before his death. Unmarried, he willed his possessions to the city of Oslo, which erected the Munch Museum in his old cottage in 1963. His possessions contained a collection of 1,008 paintings, 4,443 drawings and 15,391 prints, as well as woodcuts, etchings, lithographs, lithographic stones, woodcut blocks, copperplates and photographs.