Edvard Munch – Death in the Sickroom

Death in the Sickroom

Death in the Sickroom by Edvard Munch is a large painting of 1893 in oil, tempera and wax crayon on canvas, held under inventory number NG.M.00940 by the National Museum (Nasjonalmuseet) in Oslo. The original measures 169.5 x 152.5 cm. The scene is an almost bare room with a high ceiling and a plank floor, in which a family has gathered.

The dying sister sits in a tall wickerback chair seen from behind, so that she herself is nearly hidden; only the edge of her head and shoulders shows. The family stands around her. A young woman in a dark dress looks straight out at us, another is turned away, a bowed figure kneels at the front, an older man sits at the right with his hands clasped, a further woman stands beside him, and at the far left a man by the wall turns away. The floor rises steeply towards the back, so that the room reads more like a stage than a real space. The walls are empty, without windows or pictures; the only furniture is the chair and a bed at the right edge.

The scene returns to the death of the painter’s sister Johanne Sophie, who died of tuberculosis in 1877. Munch did not paint his brothers and sisters as the children they were then, however, but as the adults they were when he made the work. Memory and present stand in the same room. The strongest thing here is what is absent: none of those present looks at anyone else. Each is alone with a thought, and no glance meets another.

The museum gives the technique as oil, tempera and wax crayon on canvas; the work is therefore not carried out in oil alone. Munch laid the colour on thin and dry, in places thin enough for the canvas to show through, and elsewhere drew a hard line in wax crayon across paint already laid. The palette is narrowed to green, brown, black and a few red accents; it is that restraint which gives the scene its silence.

Ours is hand-painted in oil on canvas, brush stroke by brush stroke, made to order and never a print. Because every canvas is made individually, tones and strokes differ slightly from one to the next; those small differences are the mark of a hand rather than a flaw. The original technique is given in the table below. The hardest passage here is the faces, which must stay withheld rather than become portraits. As hand-painted canvas art of this weight the motif asks above all for calm in the darks.

The format is almost square and the painting large, so it needs a wide quiet wall and some distance: a living room, a gallery corridor or a room with a high ceiling. A pale, neutral wall serves it best, since the work itself is dark and quiet; a strong colour beside it would take away its seriousness. Hang it at eye level in soft, even light. As wall decor it does not tolerate loud neighbours; it stands best alone.

Ten sizes are available along with a custom size, and every canvas can be ordered framed or unframed. You choose the frame in our 3D app, where mouldings and colours can be tried against this motif; a plain dark moulding works better here than an ornamented one. More of the artist is in the Edvard Munch gallery, and we write about his life and painting on the Edvard Munch blog.