The Sick Child

A painting built on a family loss

When Edvard Munch was fourteen, his older sister Sophie died of tuberculosis in 1877. His mother had died of the same disease years earlier. The Sick Child grew out of that memory: a pale girl in a chair, and a woman bowed beside her in grief.

Munch painted the first version in 1885 to 1886, now in the National Museum in Oslo. He returned to the subject again and again over his life. The version shown here was painted in 1907 and belongs to Tate in London.

The girl looks past the woman

The girl sits propped against a large white pillow, her red hair loose around a thin face. She looks to the side, not at the woman, but beyond her, towards something we cannot see.

Munch painted her with rapid, scraped strokes. The face almost dissolves into the pillow behind, as if the paint itself were fading.

A woman who cannot look

Beside the bed, a woman in black bows her head so low that her face disappears. Her hand holds the girl’s. She is often identified with Munch’s aunt Karen, who cared for the family after his mother died.

The two hands meeting at the centre are the emotional core of the picture. One figure looks away into the distance; the other cannot look at all.

Rough paint for a raw memory

At the right, a glass stands on a small table, painted with a few quick lines. The whole surface is loose and streaked, in greens, reds and blacks.

When Munch showed the first version in 1886, critics attacked it as unfinished. He later said he had reworked it many times to capture what he felt rather than how the room looked. By 1907 the brushwork is even freer, closer to the Expressionism his work would inspire.

Questions about The Sick Child

Who is the sick child?

The painting draws on the death of Munch’s sister Sophie from tuberculosis in 1877.

How many versions are there?

Munch painted the subject several times. The first (1885 to 1886) is in Oslo; this 1907 version is at Tate.

Where is this version?

Tate, London.

Why does it look unfinished?

Munch deliberately used rough, scraped paint to express emotion rather than detail.

Sources and image credit

• Tate: Edvard Munch, The Sick Child
• Wikimedia Commons: The Sick Child (1907)

Public-domain reproduction of The Sick Child (1907), via Wikimedia Commons. Detail images are crops of the same historical painting; no reconstruction or upscaling.