Edvard Munch, The Storm, 1893

In 1893, a large storm hit Aasgaardstrand, Norway causing a huge stir. In a more expressionist, than post-impressionist painting, Edvard Munch recreates this psychologically damaging scene (much like his other paintings). Positioned similarly to The Scream, the women, faceless, stand awestruck in horror, giving off as much coldness as surrounds them. In contrast, the bright windows give "off the only source of light and warmth."

His representational way of painting comes through clearly in the surrounding objects. The woman's hair, a mere slash of oil, blows frantically back with the huge gusts of wind. Perhaps their anguish can come from the society in which they don't want to participate, or are excluded from. Standing apart from sea and the house, almost lost between land and ocean, the women clump together in fear and disillusion. The encasing-like black line that surrounds the further back women make them into one. They blend together, much like society did giving them no more than a name and a husband to care for. As for the woman in white, her dress acts to lift her off the ground and float further away from society and become more refined.

The harsh brush strokes combine both expressionism and symbolism into a rough, but fluid tableau. While the sky is dusk and dreamlike, the harsh strokes still evoke the emotion of dread and fear. The sky mimics the rocky shore leading the viewer still towards away from society with the woman in white. Many later expressionists would later look to Munch for inspiration in a way to manipulate the scenery into jagged emotional trauma.

Munch evokes a nightmarish scene full of personal psyche drama and ideas that may be surfacing from his past and present life.