The smell of death

Death is a common theme in the work of Norwegian painter and printmaker Edvard Munch and the subject of the sick room or, in this case, a ‘death room’ recurs throughout his oeuvre. Munch’s familiarity with this subject originated in his childhood: Munch occasionally accompanied his doctor father on home visits to sick patients, and both Munch’s mother and elder sister died from tuberculosis when he was just five and thirteen, respectively.

This print, in which a group of mourners huddle at the entrance to a room, seemingly reluctant to enter, was inspired directly by the painting The smell of death, 1895, in the Munch Museum, Oslo. In these works Munch shifts attention from the emotional response of the mourners, to their physical reactions – they are overcome not only by grief, but by the stench of the body lying beneath the sheet.

By the time Munch had created this striking woodcut, in 1915, pure expressionism had usurped the restrained symbolism of his 1890s woodcuts. The image’s power derives from the decisive, aggressive linework and the uneasy tension created by the woodcut lines intersecting the clearly visible horizontal woodgrain lines.

Julie Robinson, Senior Curator Prints, Drawings and Photographs