Despair

Beneath a blood-red sky, a man in a black coat leans heavily against a railing.
Deep shadows are etched around his sunken eyes, his gaze fixed downward upon the water below.

Looking at this painting, a certain famous masterpiece may come to mind.
Yes, Edvard Munch's "The Scream."
The undulating sky of swirling red and yellow.
The bridge stretching into the distance, and the receding silhouettes of two figures.
The background composition is almost identical to that of "The Scream."
Because of this, "Despair" is often described in commentary online in terms such as these:
"A mere preparatory sketch, a failed attempt at 'The Scream.'"

Yet, that is a misconception.
This work is not a failed study made prior to "The Scream."
It is an independent, finished painting created in 1894, the year after "The Scream" was completed.

Why did Munch choose to return to this very composition after having already painted "The Scream"?

It began around 1891 or 1892.
Munch was walking along a road in Kristiania, Norway, with two friends.
As the sun set, the sky suddenly turned blood-red.
Feeling an agonizing pain in his chest, exhausted, he leaned against the railing.
His friends walked on, leaving him trembling with anxiety.
A vast, infinite scream pierced through nature.

To visualize this intense experience, he painted the first version of "Despair" in 1892.
Then, in 1893, he created his definitive masterpiece, "The Scream," featuring a figure facing forward with hands over its ears.

A dynamic panic that seemed to release everything.
That should have brought his artistic quest to an end.

Yet in 1894, while staying in Berlin, Germany, Munch took up his brush once more.
At the time, his life was deeply unsettled.
His solo exhibition in Berlin was vehemently condemned as "immoral and crude," forced to close after only a few days.
He lived in constant financial distress.
In terms of health, he suffered from nervous exhaustion and excessive drinking.
The psychological trauma from the sudden death of his father, Christian, in 1889 still cast a dark shadow over him.

Furthermore, at the foot of the hill of Ekeberg, where he had walked, lay a psychiatric hospital.
His sister Laura, who suffered from severe mental illness, was institutionalized there.
The road he took regularly to visit her was inextricably linked in Munch's mind to familial illness, madness, and a premonition of death.