La bambina malata

Munch was 13 when his older sister Sophie died of tuberculosis at 15, propped up in a chair because lying flat left her unable to breathe. He came back to that scene for the rest of his life. This is one of six painted versions, made across some 40 years, and by the time of this one, around 1925, the grief has turned toward color: the girl's head against the white pillow, the bowed older woman beside her, worked in reds and greens far warmer than the raw, scraped first version of the 1880s. Munch said he never felt he had gotten all of it into a single picture. He kept the earliest one on his own wall and painted the profile of the dying girl again and again.