Tag Archives: The sick child

“The Sick Child” in Scandinavian art

October 28, 2019

Göran Wettrell Sweden   Figure 1. The Sick Child, Gabriel Metsu, 1660-65, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam Within Western figurative pictorial art there has long been an interest in showing sick children, their psychological attitudes, the effects on the family, and indeed the very reality of disease. One of the best known works on  this subject is by […]

Edvard Munch: The child who never grew up

April 9, 2019

Michael Yafi Houston, Texas   Figure 1: The Dead Mother The paintings of Edvard Munch are often used as an example of the association between creativity and mental illness. Can we, however, analyze them from the perspective of the feelings of a child? Traumatized by the death of his mother when he was only five […]

Edvard Munch: sickness and death

October 4, 2018

The Sick Child Death in the Sickroom These two paintings by the famous Norwegian artist Edvard Munch (1863-1944) reflect his lifelong melancholia and obsession with sickness and death. This has been attributed to his childhood experiences of his father’s drifting towards insanity, his mother’s death from tuberculosis, and the later death of two siblings from […]

The art of consumption – TB and John Lavery

January 2, 2018

Emily Boyle Belfast, Northern Ireland   1. “The sick child” Tuberculosis, (TB) is often regarded as a historical disease—in the 1880’s it caused a quarter of all deaths in the UK. Mortality rates from TB fell by 17% between 2005 and 2015,1 but it remains an important health concern. Worldwide it is still the second most […]