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拍品專文
Edvard Munch wrote about his childhood: 'Nothing but illness and death in our family. We were simply born to it.' At a young age, the artist lost both his mother and beloved sister Sophie to tuberculosis. These devastating events influenced Munch throughout his life and became the subjects of many of his most famous prints, drawings, and paintings. In 1885-86, he created his first painting of The Sick Child (National Gallery, Oslo, inv. no. NG.M.00839). A few years later, he executed the subject for the first time as a print, in a small etching of 1894. Over the years, he would rework the subject in numerous media, each time seeking new ways to depict this experience of suffering and loss. The present colour lithograph is the largest and arguably most haunting evocation of his dying sister. The fleeting, soft lines of the lithographic crayon convey a sense of the fragility of the girl and of the great tenderness her younger brother felt for her, while the red and yellow colours are evocative of blood, fever and sickness.
The Sick Child as a subject seems to have been particularly close to Klaus Hegewisch's heart: apart from the present lithograph, he had an impression of the etching of 1894, which is still in the collection. Astonishingly, in 1970 he was also able to acquire the only drawing of this subject. The dating of the sheet is uncertain, but it seems likely that Munch drew it in 1885, which would make it the earliest iteration of this crucial subject in the artist's oeuvre. The drawing is executed in pencil and crayon and, measuring 42,4 x 40,9 cm., focuses in life-size on the head of the girl only. Until he donated it in 1999 to the Hamburger Kunsthalle (inv. no. 1999-44) to mark the 60th birthday of the director, Uwe M. Schneede, it was one of Klaus Hegewisch's most loved treasures.
The Sick Child as a subject seems to have been particularly close to Klaus Hegewisch's heart: apart from the present lithograph, he had an impression of the etching of 1894, which is still in the collection. Astonishingly, in 1970 he was also able to acquire the only drawing of this subject. The dating of the sheet is uncertain, but it seems likely that Munch drew it in 1885, which would make it the earliest iteration of this crucial subject in the artist's oeuvre. The drawing is executed in pencil and crayon and, measuring 42,4 x 40,9 cm., focuses in life-size on the head of the girl only. Until he donated it in 1999 to the Hamburger Kunsthalle (inv. no. 1999-44) to mark the 60th birthday of the director, Uwe M. Schneede, it was one of Klaus Hegewisch's most loved treasures.