The Living-Room of the Misses Munch in Pilestredet 61

In 1881 two unmarried relatives who shared his surname, the Misses Munch of the title, asked 17-year-old Edvard to paint their living room at Pilestredet 61 in Kristiania, as Oslo was then called. It was his first paid commission. The fee was a sketchbook, and a luxurious one, bound in leather with his name stamped on the cover and lined inside with embroidered silk. Curators at the Munch Museum think he was almost too much in awe of it to use it. Several pages stayed blank, and most of the drawings in it were probably made later.

The painting itself is small, oil on a piece of cardboard about 20 by 26 centimetres. It shows the room the way its owners kept it, with deep red walls, a green sofa behind a round table, pot plants lined up along the windowsill, and two framed portraits hung on either side of a carved wall clock.