Das kranke Kind I (Schiefler 7; Woll 7)

Edvard Munch wrote about his childhood: Nothing but illness and death in our family. We were simply born to it. At a young age, the artist lost both his mother and beloved sister Sophie to tuberculosis. These devastating events influenced Munch throughout his life and became the subjects of many of his most famous prints, drawings, and paintings. In 1885-86, he created his first painting of Das kranke Kind ('The Sick Child'). Later in 1894, he executed the subject for the first time as a print. Over the years, he would rework the subject in numerous media, each time seeking new ways to convey pictorial expression to his experiences of loss. In this, his first attempt to create the subject as a print, he depicted a full view of mother and child reversed from the painting. The rich contrasts between light and dark created by the drypoint's burr heightens the haunting presence of the dying girl. Below the main subject, Munch also created an enigmatic landscape scene which some scholars postulate is a suggestion of hope in the next life. However, Munch gave us nothing concrete to speculate on in this vignette.