Death in the Sickroom

At the age of 14, Edvard Munch went through the tragedy of losing his older sister, Sophie, to Tuberculosis. In 1895, about twenty years later, Munch painted the scene of the time she died. “Death in the Sick Room”, although being about the death of his sister, hardly focuses on her. Instead, the gaze of the painting is fixed on those around her, recollecting the environment of when everyone in the family was enduring their own experience of sorrow. The emotional intensity of this work makes it one of the most notable works of the movement.