Edvard Munch: Deat at the Sickbed (1895); National Gallery, Oslo

The Norwegian painter Edvard Munch (1863 1944) had a complex attitude towards women. Much of his work shows a fascination, tending to obsession, for them, often in conjunction with the theme of love. Regarding love, Munch's feelings always seem to hover between idolatry and revulsion. In his paintings, drawings and prints, women are depicted alternately as dreamy and unattainable creatures or as vampire like monsters who suck the life out of a man.
Munch's troubled relationship with women is partly explained by his immensely sad childhood. Edvard’s misfortune started with the death of his mother when he was five years old, followed by the decease of his older sister, nine years later. Both died of tuberculosis. Edvard’s father couldn’t handle these two tragic losses and became mentally unavailable, suffering from severe depressions and religious delusions. Edvard’s other sister Laura spent the rest of her life in a mental hospital. On top of that, the family was extremely poor. All this tragedy strongly influenced Edvard's state of mind, once summarized by himself as: ‘Disease and insanity were the black angels on guard at my cradle. In my childhood, I felt I was treated in an unjust way, without a mother, sick, and with threatened punishment in hell hanging over my head.’
The picture Death at the Sickbed, which Munch painted in 1895, shows the grief and sorrow captured in one image. The artist’s family is grouped around his sister Sophie, who sits in a chair with her back towards the spectator. Edvard has depicted himself in the middle in quarter-face, staring at the tragedy. The atmosphere of intense loneliness is symbolized by the absence of any physical contact between the persons in the room. Munch did more than create a picture of a major event in his own life; the painting is also a representation of human suffering in general.
(text: Maarten Levendig)