Edvard Munch

A sourced technical report. Every claim cites a source key; the sources are listed at the end. "Uncertain" marks claims that are unverified, disputed or taken from a single object. The evidence comes from conservation and science papers of the Munch Museum, the National Museum in Oslo and the Aula project, from the survey of the materials left in his studio and from his own notes. The main pigment and medium survey was read through its abstract and through a pigment database that summarises its results painting by painting. A review chapter, a catalogue essay on his technique and a study of weathering in his estate were read only through search excerpts or summaries.

Summary

Munch painted in oil on canvas and, in his first twenty years, very often on cardboard [PETT p.1413]. Some canvases were bought primed, some primed by hand, many used raw [STEIN22 nn.9–31; MM-PUB; JUCR p.88]. The usual build of his oils on canvas is "one or a few paint layers bound with linseed oil on a ground formed from lead white in oil on top of a ground made of chalk in glue" [SIC]. He thinned paint heavily with turpentine, added chalk to some of it and let it sink into absorbent grounds or raw fabric for a matt, "fresco-like" surface [JUCR pp.88–89; NMV p.2]. He mixed oil, oil stiffened with beeswax, tempera with egg or casein, casein pastels and oil or wax crayons, sometimes in one picture [SIC]. He scraped and repainted, took canvases up again years later and worked in series of versions [MM-N570; NM-SC; PETT]. Most surfaces were left unvarnished, with occasional local gloss [NMV p.2; OCT]. From 1909 he worked and stored large canvases in outdoor studios; whether he exposed paintings to the weather on purpose (the "horse cure") is disputed [STEIN22; STEIN14]. His palette was "not extensive," though he was "reasonably willing to introduce new materials" [SIC]. The pigments are listed in §4.

Terms. Ground/priming: the preparatory layers between canvas and paint. Unprimed (raw) canvas: fabric painted without a ground. Chalk-glue ground: chalk bound in animal glue, matt and absorbent. Casein: a milk-protein binder. Tempera: paint bound with egg or another water-mixable binder. Crayon: a stick of pigment in wax, oil or both. Lean paint: paint with little binder, matt and porous. Impasto: thick, raised paint. Glaze: a transparent layer. XRF: X-ray fluorescence, which detects chemical elements. Hyperspectral imaging: identification by reflectance spectra; tentative when used alone. Efflorescence: salt crystals growing on a surface. Metal soaps: compounds formed when metal ions from a pigment react with the oil. Tacking margin: the canvas folded over the side of the stretcher.

1. Supports

• Cardboard. The museum's files list more than 170 paintings and drafts on cardboard, nearly 100 of them from 1880–90 and about 30 in each of the next two decades; after 1909 he almost stopped using it [PETT pp.1413–1414]. Both painted versions of The Scream are on unprimed cardboard: tempera and crayon (1893), and tempera and oil (c.1910), the later one on "a piece of cardboard of poor quality, unsuitable for painting" [PETT pp.1409, 1413; STEIN22 n.6; MON].
• Primed and raw canvas. Catalogue entries for paintings of 1894–1905 read "oil on preprimed canvas," "oil on hand primed canvas," "oil on home (?) primed canvas" and "diluted oil on glued (?), unprimed canvas" [STEIN22 nn.9, 22, 26–31]. A canvas of 1894 is catalogued as oil on unprimed canvas [MM-PUB].
• Commercial format, cut down. A canvas of 1891 is stamped "no. 15," a French standard size (65 × 54 cm); he later cut it to 48 cm high and restretched it [NMV p.9].
• The large sketches, 1909–16. These are on "diverse qualities of linen and cotton canvases with the paint being applied directly to the fabric," and on some primed linen. The cotton is "thin and sheet-like and most likely not made to be painted on," with many areas of bare canvas [JUCR p.88]. He fixed them straight onto the walls of his outdoor studios, remounted them several times and never stretched most of them [JUCR p.87].
• The Aula canvases. In his words, "painted on the best linen in the world, [a Belgian colorman's] pre-war linen" [MM-N53]. The eleven paintings cover about 223 m²; the largest two are 4.5 × 11.63 m [JCMS]. In his largest paintings "the canvas is thin and the paint layers heavy" [MM-LRG].
• Reuse. He often scraped canvases and reused them [STEIN17]. Read through a search summary.

2. Grounds

• Chalk-glue under lead white. The main survey found lead white in oil over chalk in glue on most of his oils on canvas [SIC].
• Reversed? On a canvas of 1894 the exposed ground holds lead white in linseed oil with pine resin, and chalk in animal glue; the summary puts the chalk-glue layer on top [CLX-MAD]. Uncertain: reported only in a summary, and the reverse of the usual build.
• Thin white grounds. A canvas of 1887 has "a relatively thin white ground layer" [NMV p.6]; on one of 1891 lead white shows in the exposed ground of the tacking margin [NMV p.11].

• The Aula paintings. Four of them (1914–16) have "thinly applied white grounds that are matt, lean and highly absorbent, and probably glue-bound," of zinc white, lead white and chalk [PLA15]. Another study describes a lower chalk ground in animal glue under a lead white ground in heat-bodied linseed oil [CUT22]. Both read through search excerpts. The bare chalk-glue ground of one Aula painting now chalks and is sensitive to water [STOV p.3].

• No ground. A relative who visited in January 1910 wrote that he "wanted the paint to soak into the canvases in order to achieve a fresco-like appearance" [JUCR p.88]. On the raw sketches "the binders got absorbed into the porous, unprimed canvases" [JUCR p.92]. He may have brushed something, perhaps casein, onto some cotton canvases [JUCR p.93]. Conservators' hypothesis.

3. Drawing and lay-in

• Charcoal and crayon. One painting is catalogued as "oil and charcoal on preprimed canvas" [STEIN22 n.27]. The large sketches carry "lines of charcoal and unidentified coloured crayons … sometimes alone, but usually next to brushstrokes of paint, principally oil paint" [JUCR p.89].
• Crayon in finished pictures. In the 1893 Scream the face is "a flat, light ochre coloured, skull-like shape, with the features carefully outlined in white crayon. The mouth is drawn in dark crayon, as are the nostrils and the iris" [PETT pp.1409–1410]. A painting of 1893–94 is oil and crayon on cardboard [PETT p.1414]. The versions of The Scream studied contain oil crayons with beeswax and Japan wax, casein pastels and a paraffin wax crayon; oil pastel appears "possibly as early as 1893 and certainly by 1910" [SIC].
• Brush drawing. A review is summarised as saying he drew the main lines in "a dark, fluid paint" on a grayish-white ground, and that infrared shows underdrawing on pale unprimed canvas [PLA15]. Uncertain (search summaries only).
• A thin first layer. He thinned oil with so much turpentine that he called the result a "turpentine painting," nearer watercolour than oil, as early as 1885 [STEIN17]. Read through search summaries.

4. Pigments

The identifications come from the 2010 survey, read through database summaries [CLX-SC; CLX-MAD; CLX-SCR], from XRF and infrared readings on canvases of 1887 and 1891 [NMV], from the study of the c.1910 Scream [MON] and from the Aula studies [JUCR; PLA15]. The Sick Child (1885–86) was reworked up to 1907 [NM-SC], so its pigments may come from any of those years.

Pigment	Evidence	Notes
Lead white	Sick Child [CLX-SC]; 1887, 1891 [NMV pp.7, 11]; crayons of 1893 [CLX-SCR]; trace in flesh of 1894 [CLX-MAD]; Aula sketches [JUCR p.89]; grounds [SIC]	Flake and Cremnitz white tubes survive [IJCS-S pp.1657–1658]
Zinc white	Sick Child [CLX-SC]; 1893 [CLX-SCR]; the main white of 1894 [CLX-MAD]; c.1910 [MON]; Aula sketches [JUCR p.89]; Aula grounds [PLA15]	A tube survives [IJCS-S p.1658]
Vermilion	Sick Child [CLX-SC]; 1887, 1891 [NMV pp.7, 11]; all reds of 1893 [CLX-SCR]; 1894 [CLX-MAD]; c.1910, "largely present in the red/orange hues of the background landscape" [MON]; Aula [JUCR; PLA15]
Red lake	Sick Child [CLX-SC]; 1893 [CLX-SCR]; Aula "organic red" [PLA15]; a fading natural red of 1905 [MM-DIS]	Dyestuff not identified. Tubes labelled rose madder (?) and purple lake (?) [IJCS-S pp.1657–1658]
Red ochre	Sick Child [CLX-SC]; browns of 1893 [CLX-SCR]
Yellow ochre	Sick Child [CLX-SC]; 1894 [CLX-MAD]; Aula sketches [JUCR p.89]; "yellow earth" of 1887 [NMV p.7]
Umber	"Possibly" in Sick Child [CLX-SC]	A raw umber tube survives [IJCS-S p.1657]
Cadmium yellow	Sick Child [CLX-SC]; 1887, 1891 [NMV pp.7, 11]; 1893 [CLX-SCR]; 1893–94, 1894 [PETT p.1413]; c.1910, in oil [MON]; Aula [PLA15]	Tubes: cadmium yellow, several "cadmium pale," a Paris maker's lemon cadmium [IJCS-S pp.1657–1658; MON]
Cadmium orange	Named among his pigments in the c.1910 Scream study [MON]	Painting not specified
Cadmium red	"By 1927–1929" [SIC]
Chrome yellow	Sick Child [CLX-SC]; orange and turquoise of 1893 [CLX-SCR]; 1894 [CLX-MAD]; Aula [JUCR; PLA15]; c.1910 [MON]
Zinc yellow	Sick Child [CLX-SC]; a crayon of 1893 [CLX-SCR]; Aula sketches [JUCR p.89]	Zinc yellow and lemon yellow tubes [IJCS-S pp.1657–1658]
Chrome green	c.1910 [MON]; Aula [PLA15]	Prussian blue with a chromate yellow (inference from the name)
Viridian	1893 [CLX-SCR]; with lead white, 1907 [CLX-WAR]	A chromium green "suggested" in 1887 [NMV p.7]
Emerald green	Sick Child, Scheele's "possibly" [CLX-SC]; "Scheele or emerald green" in Aula sketches [JUCR p.89]; Aula [PLA15]	Two tubes [IJCS-S pp.1657–1658]. A copper green [PLA15] and a copper pigment of 1894 [CLX-MAD] not further identified
Prussian blue	1887, 1891 [NMV pp.7, 11]; a crayon of 1893 [CLX-SCR]; 1894 [CLX-MAD]; Aula [JUCR; PLA15]; c.1910 [MON]
Synthetic ultramarine	Sick Child [CLX-SC]; 1893 [CLX-SCR]; 1894 [CLX-MAD]; 1907 [CLX-WAR]; Aula [JUCR; PLA15]	Ten tubes analysed [BOR24]
Cobalt blue	Sick Child, in a later repaint [CLX-SC]; Aula sketches [JUCR p.89]; Aula [STOV p.3; PLA15]	Ten tubes analysed [BOR25]
Cerulean blue	An Aula painting [PLA15]	Single painting; search excerpt
Cobalt violet	"Cobalt violet (cobalt phosphate)," an Aula painting [PLA15]	Single painting; search excerpt
Charcoal black	Sick Child [CLX-SC]; 1893 [CLX-SCR]; three samples of 1894, one of them flesh [CLX-MAD]	Cooler and weaker than bone black [SAL §290]
Bone black	Sick Child [CLX-SC]
Chalk	Added to some paints [JUCR p.89]	An extender, not a colour

• Tentative. Hyperspectral imaging of a painting of 1907 also proposed cobalt yellow, a cadmium green, an orange ochre, caput mortuum and indigo [CLX-WAR]. Uncertain (one method).
• Fillers. The 1893 cadmium yellow holds barium sulphate, its reds gypsum, its dark blue zinc white and clay [CLX-SCR]. Tubes contain magnesium carbonate [IJCS-S p.1661]; the ultramarine tubes hold clay, white pigments, other blues, metal soaps and non-drying oils, and some do not match their labels [BOR24].
• His tubes. 956 tubes from 20 makers survive: about a third from one small Paris firm, 216 oil tubes from a London colorman, the rest from other French and English makers and from seven other countries; 34 are labelled tempera, and the labels date from before 1890 to at least the 1920s. Nine palettes, 33 bags of dry pigment and about 300 crayons and pastels also survive [IJCS-S pp.1653–1658]. In one letter draft he stressed that he used the London colorman's colours [IJCS-S p.1656; MM-N53].

5. Media and varnish

• Oils. Linseed oil binds the paint layers of his oils on canvas [SIC]. His tubes hold linseed oil, poppy oil and probably stand oil; some tubes labelled oil also contain resin, wax, egg or gum arabic [IJCS-S p.1660].
• Mixed media. The versions of The Scream studied hold "oil paints and oil paints thickened with beeswax," oil crayons, casein pastels, a paraffin crayon and "at least one gum-bound paint"; his canvas sketches use oil and tempera "including egg and casein" [SIC]. In the c.1910 version the cadmium yellow is in oil, among "tempera, oil, and pastel" [MON]. The large sketches add "stand oil, linseed oil, raw linseed oil, casein and animal glue, egg and casein, egg and animal glue and animal glue alone" [JUCR p.89]. His tempera tubes hold egg with drying oil, gum and beeswax [IJCS-S p.1660].
• Turpentine and chalk. For surfaces "looking like fresco painting" he chose matt materials, thinned "his paints heavily with turpentine" and "added chalk to some of his paints." The paint is lean and porous, and "the surfaces appear matte and dull regardless of the observation angle" [JUCR p.89].
• Mostly unvarnished. His "usual custom" was to leave surfaces "unvarnished (or occasional locally varnished)"; he "appears to have favoured matt surfaces with an almost 'fresco-like' finish" [NMV p.2]. A self-portrait of 1895 keeps "an original locally applied glossy film, used by Munch to saturate certain passages" [NMV p.2]. Imaging of 13 paintings found "an occasional, localised varnishing and/or glazing technique" [OCT]. The Aula paintings were "intentionally left largely unvarnished … to achieve subtle variations in gloss, saturation, and texture" [STOV p.2].
• Varnish by others. The National Gallery varnished 48 of its 57 Munch paintings between 1909 and 1993, amid public debate [NMV p.1]. A museum removed varnish as "not consistent with Munch's practice of leaving his canvases without a unified glossy surface" [HAM-PR]. Yet in 1938 he wrote that the Aula paintings had been taken down "to be cleaned of soot and varnished" and now "radiate in the autumn sun as never before" [MM-N53]; who varnished them is not stated.

6. Layers and application

• Few layers. Most oils on canvas have "one or a few paint layers" [SIC].
• From impasto to stain. A plein-air canvas of 1887 was "executed rapidly with thick brush strokes and raised impasto"; a portrait of 1889 is thick "with little exposed ground"; a night scene of 1891 is "thinly executed and with no distinct raised impasto" [NMV pp.6, 8, 9]. The large sketches are thin and matt with bare canvas between strokes [JUCR pp.88–89]; his biggest canvases carry heavy paint [MM-LRG]. He often left the ground exposed [STEIN17] (search summary).
• Scored surfaces. In The Sick Child "thick layers of paint alternate with thin, trickling stripes, pastose brushstrokes with scratches and abrasions" [NM-SC]; the furrows and scratches scraped into it are clearest around the head [SNL-SC].
• Thick opaque strokes. In the c.1910 Scream a "thickly applied opaque cadmium yellow paint" lies in the water [MON].
• Flesh and faces. The flesh paint of a canvas of 1894 is zinc white, vermilion, charcoal black and yellow ochre with a trace of lead white [CLX-MAD]. In the c.1910 Scream "the facial features are modelled with green brushstrokes, the eye sockets are empty, the mouth is painted in the same mauve color as the body"; the 1893 face is a flat ochre shape drawn over in crayon [PETT pp.1409–1410]. In The Sick Child he struggled to keep "the transparent – pale skin against the canvas – the trembling mouth – the trembling hands" [SNL-SC, quoting him]. A portrait of 1889 has pink and red flesh tints in thick paint [NMV pp.8–9].

7. Working sequence and reworking

• Scraping and repainting. Of The Sick Child: "I repainted the picture many times over a year – scraped it out – let it flow out in the medium – and tried again and again to get the first impression." The chair and glass were too worked: "I scraped the surroundings halfway out and let everything stand in masses" [MM-N570, translated here]. X-rays show changes of composition [NM-SC].
• Years later. "I took it up again in 1895 and 1906 – then I got more of the strong colour I had wanted to give it" [MM-N570]. An area on the right was repainted "probably … between 1896 and 1907" [NM-SC]. He cut down a canvas of 1891 after painting it [NMV p.9].
• Versions and studies. He repeated motifs across paintings, drawings, pastels and prints; The Scream exists in two painted versions and two large drawings [PETT pp.1409–1410]. In 1929 he wrote that most of his works were "unfinished or studies for new works" [MM-N2634]. Read through a summary of the transcription.
• Outdoors. The canvas of 1887 was painted outdoors and shows "early framing marks in the wet oil paint" [NMV p.6]. At Kragerø (1909–15) he built large outdoor studios for the Aula sketches, though he also painted and stored work indoors [JUCR pp.87–88]. Photographs from 1910 to about 1930 show him working with and storing large paintings in outdoor studios, there and at Ekely, his home from 1916 [STEIN22 p.1422]. In 1915 he rolled several large canvases and stored them in a neighbour's shed until the 1920s [JUCR p.88].
• The "horse cure." In 1943 the businessman who handled his affairs wrote: "If dissatisfied with a picture, he often let it stand for week[s] in sunshine and rain. In this way he may chance upon new color-effects. He called it the 'horse-cure'" [STEIN22 p.1421]. Apparently no one else used the term in his lifetime [STEIN22 p.1422]. A conservator's study of 65 paintings he offered for sale in 1906 found that "none of the examined paintings could have withstood rain without severe damages" [STEIN22 p.1431]; her study of the 997 paintings in his estate puts their weathering down to poor storage and negligence [STEIN14] (search summary).

8. Condition and aging

• Fading cadmium yellow. In the c.1910 Scream, cadmium yellow in the sky and on the neck has turned off-white and the thick yellow in the water flakes; the pigment was made by a wet process with chlorine compounds, and moisture drives the change [MON].
• Darkening blues and reds. Blue paints darken more often in works from 1907 on [BOR24]; in a painting of 1907 ultramarine, cobalt blue and red lake areas have darkened [FER19]. Red lakes fade [MM-DIS].
• Powdery, water-sensitive paint. "Almost all the paint layers have poor cohesive forces," because the binder sank into raw canvas and he added chalk or thinners; most are sensitive to water "no matter which binder is present" [JUCR pp.92, 96]. The Aula paintings are water- and friction-sensitive [CUT22].
• Salts and soaps. Zinc and magnesium sulphates crust some sketches [JUCR p.93]; zinc oxalates and metal soaps occur in the Aula paintings [JCMS] and zinc oxalate on the c.1910 Scream [MON].
• Storage damage. Water stains, mould, moss, bird droppings and soil mark the outdoor sketches [JUCR p.90]; tears and holes already marked several paintings in 1906 [STEIN22 pp.1427–1431]. Cardboard yellows and grows brittle [MM-DIS].

9. The tubes here

The historical names in this note are mapped to these tubes: lead white (flake, Cremnitz) → lead white; zinc white → zinc white; vermilion → vermilion; cadmium red → cadmium red; red lake → rose madder (a proxy: the dyestuff is not identified); red ochre → red earth; yellow ochre and yellow earth → yellow ochre; umber → raw umber; chrome yellow → chrome yellow; zinc yellow and "lemon yellow" → lemon chrome (a proxy: another pale chromate yellow); cadmium yellow → cadmium yellow; "cadmium pale" and lemon cadmium → pale cadmium; cadmium orange → deep cadmium; viridian → viridian; emerald green, Scheele's green and the unidentified copper greens → emerald green; chrome green is mixed from Prussian blue and chrome yellow; Prussian blue → Prussian blue; synthetic ultramarine → ultramarine blue; cobalt blue → cobalt blue; cerulean blue → cerulean blue; cobalt violet → cobalt violet; bone black → bone black; charcoal black → charcoal black (a new tube). Cerulean blue and cobalt violet rest on one painting each (§4). The tentative identifications of 1907 get no tubes. Chalk is not a tube.

10. At this easel

• Support. Plain-weave linen with ground layers laid from the tubes.
• Paint. Pigment from the tubes with an oil-medium share.
• Taking paint off. A brush picks up wet paint as it passes; that is how paint comes off the canvas.
• Everything else the easel does is in the easel guide.

Sources

• [SIC] Singer, B. et al., "Investigation of Materials Used by Edvard Munch," Studies in Conservation 55:4 (2010), pp.274–292. Read through the abstract (Northumbria University research portal) and ColourLex's per-painting summaries. https://doi.org/10.1179/sic.2010.55.4.274 ; abstract: https://researchportal.northumbria.ac.uk/en/publications/investigation-of-materials-used-by-edvard-munch
• [CLX-SC] ColourLex, "Edvard Munch, The Sick Child" (Nasjonalmuseet NG.M.00839, 1885–86), results after [SIC]. https://colourlex.com/project/edvard-munch-sick-child/
• [CLX-MAD] ColourLex, "Edvard Munch, Madonna" (Munch Museum, 1894, oil on canvas), sample results after [SIC]. https://colourlex.com/project/edvard-munch-madonna/
• [CLX-SCR] ColourLex, "Edvard Munch, The Scream" (1893, tempera and crayon on cardboard), sample results after [SIC]. https://colourlex.com/project/edvard-munch-the-scream/
• [CLX-WAR] ColourLex, "Edvard Munch, Old Man in Warnemünde" (1907), after Deborah, H. et al., Color and Imaging Conference 25 (2017), pp.339–344, a hyperspectral study. https://colourlex.com/project/edvard-munch-old-man-in-warnemunde/
• [FER19] Ferrer, J. S. et al., "Investigating Colour Changes in Red and Blue Paints – A Preliminary Study of Art Materials and Techniques in Edvard Munch's Old Man in Warnemünde (1907)," in van den Berg, K. J. et al. (eds.), Conservation of Modern Oil Paintings (Springer, 2019), pp.209–218. Read through a search excerpt. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19254-9_15
• [MON] Monico, L. et al., "Probing the chemistry of CdS paints in The Scream by in situ noninvasive spectroscopies and synchrotron radiation x-ray techniques," Science Advances 6:20 (2020), eaay3514. Read at PubMed Central through quoted passages. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7228759/
• [IJCS-S] Sandu, I. C. A. et al., "The art historical materials collection at MUNCH: colours, brands, labels," International Journal of Conservation Science 13, SI 1 (2022), pp.1653–1664. Full text read; makers are described, not named. https://ijcs.ro/public/IJCS-22-122_Sandu.pdf
• [STEIN22] Stein, M., "An Edvard Munch sales inventory from 1906. The condition of the paintings related to Rolf Stenersen's assertion about the 'kill-or-cure' remedy," International Journal of Conservation Science 13, SI 1 (2022), pp.1421–1434. Full text read; endnotes cited by number. https://ijcs.ro/public/IJCS-22-105_Stein.pdf
• [STEIN14] Stein, M., "Edvard Munch and the 'Kill-or-Cure' Remedy. Analysis of the Ekely Collection at the Munchmuseet," Zeitschrift für Kunsttechnologie und Konservierung 28:2 (2014), pp.279–297. Read through a search summary. https://www.academia.edu/30196182/
• [STEIN17] Stein, M., "Patterns in Munch's Painting Technique," in Edvard Munch: Between the Clock and the Bed (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2017). Read only through search summaries. https://www.academia.edu/35426122/
• [PETT] Pettersen, P., "Edvard Munch – The Scream," International Journal of Conservation Science 13, SI 1 (2022), pp.1405–1420. Full text read. https://ijcs.ro/public/IJCS-22-104_Pettersen.pdf
• [JUCR] Sandbakken, E. G. and Tveit, E. S., "Preserving a Master: Edvard Munch & His Painted Sketches," Journal of Urban Culture Research 5 (2012), pp.86–104. Full text read. https://www.cujucr.com/downloads/Individual%20Articles/5/vol5%20Erika%20Gohde%20Sandbakken%20&%20Eva%20Storevik%20Tveit.pdf
• [NMV] Ford, T. et al., "A non-invasive screening study of varnishes applied to three paintings by Edvard Munch using portable diffuse reflectance infrared Fourier transform spectroscopy (DRIFTS)," Heritage Science 7 (2019), 84. Full text read. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40494-019-0327-1
• [OCT] Ford, T. et al., "Munch and optical coherence tomography: unravelling historical and artist applied varnish layers in painting collections," European Physical Journal Plus 136 (2021), 899. Abstract read. https://doi.org/10.1140/epjp/s13360-021-01758-5
• [STOV] Stoveland, L. P. et al., "Evaluation of novel cleaning systems on mock-ups of unvarnished oil paint and chalk-glue ground within the Munch Aula Paintings Project," Heritage Science 9 (2021), 144. Full text read. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40494-021-00599-w
• [CUT22] Cutajar, J. D. et al., "Hyperspectral Imaging Analyses of Cleaning Tests on Edvard Munch's Monumental Aula Paintings," Studies in Conservation 67, sup1 (2022), pp.59–68. Read through search excerpts. https://doi.org/10.1080/00393630.2022.2054617
• [JCMS] Grøntoft, T. et al., "Predicting Future Condition and Conservation Costs from Modelling Improvements to the Indoor Environment: The Monumental Munch-Paintings in the University of Oslo's Aula Assembly Hall," Journal of Conservation and Museum Studies 17 (2019), 5. Read through a summary. https://jcms-journal.com/articles/10.5334/jcms.185
• [PLA15] Plahter, U., "Munch's paintings: scientific research both recent and in retrospect," in Frøysaker, T. et al. (eds.), Public Paintings by Edvard Munch and His Contemporaries: Change and Conservation Challenges (London: Archetype, 2015), pp.3–35. Read only through search excerpts; it reports the Aula XRF survey of Frøysaker and Liu. https://archetype.co.uk/our-titles/public-paintings-by-edvard-munch-and-his-contemporaries/?id=234
• [BOR24] Boracchi, B. G. et al., "Ultramarine Blue in Edvard Munch's Collection: A Multi-Analytical Study of Early 20th Century Commercial Oil Paints," Heritage 7:8 (2024), pp.4027–4044. Abstract read. https://doi.org/10.3390/heritage7080190
• [BOR25] Boracchi, B. G. et al., "A multi-analytical study of early twentieth-century industrially produced cobalt blue paints from Edvard Munch's studio," European Physical Journal Plus 140 (2025), 188. Title and a search excerpt only. https://doi.org/10.1140/epjp/s13360-025-06062-0
• [MM-N53] Munch, E., note on a newspaper report about the Aula paintings, 1938, Munchmuseet MM N 53. Read in the eMunch transcription; translations through a summary. https://emunch.no/HYBRIDNo-MM_N0053.xhtml
• [MM-N570] Munch, E., printed booklet on the making of the Frieze of Life, with his handwritten notes, undated (about 1929), Munchmuseet MM N 570. Read in the eMunch transcription; translated here. https://emunch.no/HYBRIDNo-MM_N0570.xhtml
• [MM-N2634] Munch, E., letter drafts to a museum director, 1929, Munchmuseet MM N 2634. Read through a summary of the eMunch transcription. https://emunch.no/HYBRIDNo-MM_N2634.xhtml
• [NM-SC] Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo, collection entry for The Sick Child, NG.M.00839. https://www.nasjonalmuseet.no/en/collection/object/NG.M.00839
• [SNL-SC] Kirkholt, T., "Det syke barn," Store norske leksikon, quoting Munch's text on the painting. https://snl.no/Det_syke_barn
• [MM-PUB] Munchmuseet, collection entry MM.M.00281 (1894, oil on unprimed canvas, 150 × 112.5 cm). https://www.munch.no/en/object/MM.M.00281
• [MM-DIS] Munchmuseet, "These artworks will one day disappear" (web article). https://www.munch.no/en/our-collection/These-artworks-will-one-day-disappear/
• [MM-LRG] Munchmuseet, "Munch's largest paintings have to be lifted through the museum wall" (web article). https://www.munch.no/en/our-collection/munchs-largest-paintings-have-to-be-lifted-through-the-museum-wall/
• [HAM-PR] Harvard Art Museums, press release on the exhibition Edvard Munch: Technically Speaking (2025). https://harvardartmuseums.org/about/press-media/technical-examination-of-edvard-munch-s-painting-and-printmaking-techniques-highlighted-in-harvard-art-museums-exhibition
• [SAL] Field's Chromatography, revised by T. W. Salter (London 1869), §290 "Blue Black" (and §294 "Lamp Black," cited in the tube proposal). https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/20915