Focus on this artwork and discuss the Reception.
A few months after its completion, the painting (originally titled Evening) was displayed for the first time at the annual autumn exhibition in Kristiana, while Munch had already traveled to Paris to collect impressions of the local art scene through which his symbolism would find expressive style. 
The contemporary criticism was extremely hostile.Morgenbladet called the painting pure "gibberish" and said the public was being bamboozled. Other voices criticized the "easily thrown stones that seem to be made only from soft, shapeless substance".Aftenposten described the seated figure as "a physical entity with no trace of life and expression, as untrue in the form as in the color [...] On the whole this seems to us to have such a low artistic value that his presence at the exhibition itself is difficult to defend. " Dagbladet nevertheless pointed out: "To understand it, one must constantly have in mind that Munch poet is - a person who can be entirely covered by a mood to her and her playing devotedly, without regard to conventional laws and forms, often with a tendency to fantasy. "Munch's Norwegian colleague Erik Werenskiold bought it directly from the exhibition in 1909; it was acquired in 1924 by the Norwegian art collector Rasmus Meyer as part of his public collections in Bergen.
symbolism Rasmus Meyer Bergen Norwegian Erik Werenskiold