Edvard Munch

Composed in black and rather sickly green linework, artist Edvard Munch’s elder sister, Johanne Sophie, lies on a bed, looking listlessly off to the yawning void to her right. Sophie died from tuberculous nearly two decades before Munch made this lithograph. This was not the first time Munch created a remembered portrait of his beloved sister. What is significant about his portraits of his sister is that they represent his break from Impressionism to make what he would call “soul paintings.” Here, then, we see how an experience with illness and loss led to developments within Expressionism, a style focused on the visualization of the artist’s inner emotions.