Norwegian artist Edvard Munch (1863-1944) [https://www.munch.no/en/edvard-munch/] was profoundly influenced by family tragedies. His mother died of tuberculosis when he was five years old as did his sister Sophie several years later. In this context, three of his paintings are of particular interest:
The Sick Child
The sick child is thought to be the artist’s sister. She is not a child but rather a young girl who is lying down or seated, with a blanket over her lower body and she faces a woman who is seated beside her, clutching the child’s left hand. We cannot see the woman’s face – it is turned down as she is bent over in apparent grief. While the painting’s title names the girl as the subject of the painting, it is the grieving woman and her attention to the girl that is particularly striking.
Death and the Child
Death and the Child depicts the anguish of a child who has been confronted with the corpse of her mother lying in bed. The child faces the viewer, hands pressing against her ears – she cannot bear to “hear”/ absorb what she has encountered; her face has an expression of fear and despair
Death in the Sickroom
In Death in the Sickroom several adults are scattered about, some standing, one woman sitting in the foreground; behind her another woman stands facing us. In the back of the room a figure sits on a chair, a blanket draped over her lap – presumably this is Munch’s sister. With his back to the wall an elderly man has both hands pressed to his chest. These individuals have come to help and mourn but they are isolated from each other, which adds to the grimness of the scene.
Image credits: wiki commons
