The Sick Child I

This is a large print, about 57 centimetres wide, made in only two inks: a pale, icy blue and a stark black. It shows a child's head silhouetted against a pillow. The subject is Sophie, the artist's sister, shown shortly before she died. The paper is ivory, and its warm tone frames the cold colours. The image is a lithograph, which means it was printed from a flat stone that has been drawn on, rather than cut or engraved. Look first at the head and the pillow, and notice how few colours are needed to build the scene.

Edvard Munch was thirteen when his sister Sophie died of tuberculosis, an illness of the lungs. Nine years later he painted the first of five versions of The Sick Child. The paintings were very successful, and between 1894 and 1896 he made three prints of the same scene. This is the last of them. In 1896 he went to Paris to try new printmaking methods and to work with respected printers such as Auguste Clot. He also hoped for the commercial success that had escaped him there before. This was his first colour lithograph, printed from two stones.

Munch described painting this scene as a kind of release, both of technique and of personal feeling. He returned to it again and again. In Paris he printed the image with many colour combinations. He made the main black or red stone, then added up to four other colours, such as gray, yellow, or purple-blue. He knew that colours carry symbolic meaning. In this impression, the icy blue and stark black suggest the haunting pallor of death. Look again at the girl's head against the pillow, and see how the cold colour seems to drain the warmth from her.