Der Tod und das Kind

Munch grew up around illness and early death. His mother died of tuberculosis when he was five, and his adored older sister Sophie died of the same disease at 15, when he was 14. He returned to those losses for decades, and this is one such return, painted in 1899. A child stands at the front of the room, pressing her hands to her head and turning away from the deathbed behind her, where the adults are gathered as blurred, faceless grief. Munch lets her red dress and her frozen stillness carry the whole feeling. He often reworked the same scene, and related versions of this deathbed hang in other collections.