Foster Mothers in Court

Foster Mothers in Court depicts a legal proceeding — specifically the court examination of women accused or involved in the practice of foster-mothering, which in late nineteenth-century Scandinavia was associated with the dark practice of 'baby farming,' where infants were taken in for payment by women who often allowed them to die through neglect or worse. The subject connected to major social reform campaigns in Norway and Germany in the 1890s and 1900s; court scenes depicting such proceedings were painted and illustrated as part of the campaign for greater legal and social protection of illegitimate children and their mothers. Munch's engagement with this subject reflects both his social conscience and his family's painful history with illegitimacy. The Munch Museum holds this work.

Munch renders the court scene with an unflinching directness, the figures of the women — accused, witnesses, officials — placed in the institutional space of a Norwegian courtroom without dramatic staging. The palette is deliberately unglamorous, dominated by the greys and dark blues of official interiors and formal dress.