Afternoon Nap

In the autumn of 1886, Munch showed The Sick Child at the annual Autumn Exhibition in Kristiania, today's Oslo, and its rough, scraped surface caused an uproar. In the same year he painted this small scene at home. A woman sits by the window, and an older man lies asleep on the sofa beside her. They are usually identified as Munch's father, Christian, an army doctor, and his aunt Karen Bjølstad, who ran the household after his mother died. Munch had already drawn his father resting after dinner in 1883, and around 1885 he made a pastel of family members asleep in an interior, so this after-dinner hour was a subject he kept coming back to. He painted this version in oil on unprimed cardboard, and it is among the works he left to the city of Oslo.