'Could only have been painted by a madman'—who wrote that?

The Pencil Note That Hid for a Century

When conservators at Norway's National Museum trained infrared cameras on The Scream in 2004, they expected to find underdrawings or pigment degradation. Instead, they discovered eight words in faint pencil in the upper left corner: 'Kan kun være malet af en gal Mand' — 'can only have been painted by a madman.' The script was tiny, barely visible to the naked eye, and blended into the swirling orange sky. Handwriting experts compared the slant and letter forms to Munch's diaries and confirmed the artist himself had inscribed it, likely in 1904. The discovery electrified art historians because it reframed the painting's mythology: Munch hadn't passively absorbed the public's horror at his work, he'd answered it in the most intimate medium possible, writing directly onto the canvas as if whispering back to his accusers. The note had been there all along, hidden in plain sight for a hundred years, waiting for technology to catch up.

Munch painted the first version of The Scream in 1893, depicting a skeletal figure clutching its head on a bridge while the sky burns red and orange behind it. He called the series Der Schrei der Natur—The Scream of Nature—and described the inspiration in his diary: walking at sunset near Oslo, he felt 'a great, infinite scream piercing through nature.' Critics were bewilderered. At an 1895 Berlin exhibition, reviewers called the work 'sickly' and 'unhinged,' and one psychiatrist published an essay diagnosing Munch with melancholia based on his brushwork. By 1904, when Munch showed a pastel version in Copenhagen, whispers about his mental health had hardened into public speculation. One Danish critic wrote that only someone disturbed could see the world in such 'tortured, unnatural colors.' Munch read every review. He was already struggling—his father had died in an asylum, his sister Laura was institutionalized, and he'd recently ended a violent relationship. The accusations of madness weren't just aesthetic judgments; they were existential threats.

So Munch picked up a pencil and wrote his retort on the painting itself. The inscription wasn't a confession—it was a reclaiming. By owning the word 'madman,' he stripped it of its power to shame him and repositioned it as proof of his vision. The choice of pencil mattered: pencil is impermanent, easily erased, a private medium compared to the boldness of oil paint. Munch wasn't making a public statement for gallery-goers; he was leaving a message for himself, or perhaps for future viewers who might look closely enough. The note also suggests he saw the painting as unfinished or unsettled, still open to alteration and annotation. In 1908, Munch did suffer a breakdown and spent eight months in a Copenhagen clinic. When he emerged, he painted more calmly, with brighter palettes and less anguish. But he never removed the pencil note. It stayed, a relic of the moment when the world called him mad and he wrote it down as his credential.

Why the Inscription Still Resonates

The discovery of the note changed how museums present The Scream. Before 2004, curators framed it as a universal symbol—anyone could feel that scream, that dread, that alienation. After 2004, it became impossible to ignore the painting's origin as a deeply personal act of self-defense. Munch wasn't painting for the ages; he was painting to survive, and the note proves it. Today, the inscription is highlighted in exhibitions, discussed in audio guides, and reproduced in catalogs. It turns viewers into detectives, peering at the upper left corner to spot the faint letters themselves. The note also legitimizes the emotion in the painting: Munch's anxiety wasn't a flaw or a disorder to be corrected, it was the raw material of his art, and he knew it. In an era when mental health is openly discussed and destigmatized, the pencil note reads as an early act of radical honesty—Munch claiming his inner life as valid, vital, and worth rendering in paint. The madman label, once an insult, is now a badge of his courage to see and depict what others refused to acknowledge.