# The Scream > Edvard Munch - 1895 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/edvard-munch/the-scream-lithograph-met/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-08-21 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Edvard Munch - **Date:** 1895 - **Medium:** Lithograph in black ink on wove paper, printed from a single limestone block - **Dimensions:** Image 35.7 x 23.6 cm (14 1/16 x 9 5/16 in); sheet 51.4 x 39.7 cm (20 1/4 x 15 5/8 in) - **Object type:** Print - **Period:** Norwegian Symbolism, 1890s - **Current location:** Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Department of Drawings and Prints - **Attribution:** accepted ## Summary This is not the painting. It is one sheet from an unrecorded print run of about thirty to forty-five lithographs that Munch pulled from a single stone in 1895, a black and white impression carrying both the German title 'Geschrei' and the full line 'Ich fuehlte das grosse Geschrei durch die Natur' printed into the same stone as the image. It reached the Metropolitan Museum in 1982 through the bequest of Scofield Thayer, the Dial magazine's editor and a voracious buyer of works on paper in the early 1920s, and was formally accessioned in 1984.No sale record exists for this particular sheet. A different, black and white impression of the same edition, once owned by Munch's patron Olaf Schou, came up at Sotheby's London in 2016 with an estimate of 800,000 to 1,200,000 pounds; a completely different object in a completely different medium, a 1895 pastel version of the same motif, sold at Sotheby's New York in 2012 for 119,922,600 dollars. Neither of those is this print, and this print was never involved in either of the two thefts that made the painted Scream world-famous for the wrong reasons, in 1994 and 2004.The Met's own public catalogue currently flags this object as not public domain, while Wikimedia Commons hosts a CC0-dedicated photograph of the same sheet donated by the Met itself in 2017. Both facts are true at once and neither source resolves the other. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **1895** Edvard Munch `[documented]` (origin) Printed by Munch from a single lithographic stone in 1895, one of an estimated thirty to forty-five impressions pulled before the stone was ground down. No formal edition or print run record survives. - **1895-c. 1921** Unknown `[unknown]` (gap) No owner is documented for this sheet between its printing in 1895 and its presence in Scofield Thayer's collection. Thayer's main period of active buying was 1921 to 1923, but no source consulted confirms this print was acquired within that window specifically, rather than earlier or later. - **c. 1921-1923 (inferred)-1982** Scofield Thayer `[documented]` (acquisition and ownership) Held in the collection of Scofield Thayer, editor and co-publisher of The Dial, who assembled roughly six hundred works on paper in London, Paris, Berlin and Vienna between 1921 and 1923. The Met's own credit line confirms Thayer as the immediately preceding owner; the exact acquisition date and any dealer are not documented in sources consulted. - **1982-1984** Estate of Scofield Thayer `[documented]` (bequest) Thayer died 9 July 1982 in Edgartown, Massachusetts, aged 93, having drawn up a will in 1925 leaving his collection to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Roughly four hundred items entered the museum by this bequest; this print was formally accessioned in 1984. - **1984-present** Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York `[documented]` (accession) Accession number 1984.1203.1, Department of Drawings and Prints. Current public-domain status is inconsistently stated between the museum's own collection API and its own 2017 Wikimedia Commons donation of a photograph of this sheet; see the open questions. ## Auction results Hammer and buyer's premium are stated separately. Where a source conflates them this record says so. - **** , - No auction transaction is recorded for the Met's own impression: it reached the museum by bequest, not by purchase, and no sale of this specific sheet is documented in the sources consulted. For comparison only, and explicitly not this object: a black-and-white impression of the same 1895 lithograph, carrying the same title and full German inscription, with provenance to Olaf Schou (acquired from the artist's circle c. 1900) and by descent through his brother Christian Schou, was offered at Sotheby's London, Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale, 21 June 2016, lot 6, estimate GBP 800,000-1,200,000; the hammer or sold price was not found in the sources consulted. Separately, and far more widely reported, a completely different 1895 object in a completely different medium, a pastel, sold at Sotheby's New York on 2 May 2012 for USD 119,922,600 including premium, then a record for any work of art at auction; that pastel remains in a private collection and is not this lithograph. ## Open questions - When, from whom, and through what dealer did Scofield Thayer acquire this print? No source consulted documents the transaction; it is inferred only from his general 1921-1923 buying pattern. - Why does the Met's own public collection API currently return isPublicDomain: false for this object while Wikimedia Commons hosts a CC0-dedicated photograph of the same sheet donated by the Met itself in 2017? Neither source resolves the other. - What is the true total number of impressions Munch pulled from the stone before it was ground down? Estimates in the sources consulted range from about thirty to about forty-five, and no source gives a sourced, definitive census of the edition. - Has this specific sheet ever been the subject of a technical condition or paper analysis, comparable to the pigment analyses carried out on the Munch Museum's painted versions? None was found. - What price did the ex-Olaf Schou impression achieve at Sotheby's London on 21 June 2016? The estimate is documented; the hammer or sold price is not, in the sources consulted. - Has the Met's impression been lent for exhibition, and if so where and when? No exhibition history for this specific sheet was found. ## Sources - [1] Metropolitan Museum of Art, public collection record for object 340029, 'The Scream,' Edvard Munch, accession 1984.1203.1. - [2] Wikimedia Commons, file description and licensing metadata for 'File:The Scream MET DP860367.jpg', donated by the Metropolitan Museum of Art under CC0. - [3] Direct visual examination of the Metropolitan Museum's own donated photograph of this sheet (full-resolution file hosted on Wikimedia Commons), confirming black-and-white state, absence of hand-colouring, and the printed title and full inscription. - [4] Museum of Modern Art, New York, collection record for 'Edvard Munch. The Scream. 1895; signed 1896', on the estimated number of impressions, hand-colouring, the printed inscription, and the mirror-reversal printing process. - [5] Munchmuseet (Munch Museum, Oslo), '5 things you should know about The Scream', on the estimated edition size, the museum's six impressions including one hand-coloured by Munch, and the trimming of the inscription on some surviving sheets. - [6] Petra Pettersen, 'Edvard Munch - The Scream', International Journal of Conservation Science, vol. 13, Special Issue 1 (December 2022), pp. 1405-1420. Munchmuseet curatorial research on the full sequence of drawings, paintings and the 1895 lithograph, the dating debate, and the Berlin exhibition and review history. - [7] Sotheby's, Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale, London, 21 June 2016, lot 6, catalogue entry for a comparable black-and-white, fully inscribed impression of the same lithograph, ex-Olaf Schou. - [8] justcollecting.com, 'Edvard Munch's The Scream lithograph to sell at Sotheby's', on the estimated edition size of about forty-five impressions and the printer's stone being ground down. - [9] Wikipedia, 'Scofield Thayer', for his biography, his collecting activity between 1921 and 1923, and his 1982 bequest to the Metropolitan Museum. Flagged as tertiary; recommended for replacement with the Met's own Leonard A. Lauder Research Center provenance file on Thayer, which could not be retrieved during this research session (repeated 429/rate-limit responses from metmuseum.org). - [10] Norwegian Arts, 'Edvard Munch: The graphic works' (archived), for Munch's own quoted statements on black as a colour, on his intention in taking up graphic media, and on his Berlin printmaking beginnings with L. Angerer. - [11] Wikipedia, 'Edvard Munch', for basic biographical facts (birthplace, dates, childhood deaths). Flagged as tertiary; recommended for replacement with a scholarly biography such as Sue Prideaux's Edvard Munch: Behind the Scream. - [12] Wikimedia Commons category 'The Scream (Woll G 38) by Edvard Munch' and associated file metadata, used to identify and verify licensing of comparanda impressions at Thielska Galleriet and the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, and the Wellcome Collection reproduction. - [13] Scholarly literature on Munch's 1908 breakdown and treatment under Dr. Daniel Jacobson in Copenhagen, indexed via PubMed, 'Edvard Munch's crisis in 1908 and French medicine: His doctors, treatments, and sources of information', Journal of the History of the Neurosciences. - [14] Wikipedia, 'Degenerate art', for the 1937 Nazi purge of German state museum collections and Munch's inclusion among the affected artists. Flagged as tertiary. - [15] Wikipedia, 'Munch Museum', for the 1944 bequest to the City of Oslo, the museum's 1963 founding and 2021 relocation, and the scale of its graphic holdings. Flagged as tertiary; recommended for replacement with Munchmuseet's own published collection figures. - [16] CNN, ''The Scream' sold for nearly $120 million', on the 2 May 2012 Sotheby's New York sale of the 1895 pastel version, a separate object from this lithograph. - [17] Britannica, 'Today in History: February 12, The Theft of The Scream', on the 1994 theft of the painted Scream from the National Gallery, Oslo. - [18] NPR, 'Munch's Masterpieces Said to Be Recovered', on the 2004 theft and 2006 recovery of the painted Scream and Madonna from the Munch Museum, Oslo. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. If you quote this record, quote the provenance grades with it.