Spring

Spring, painted in 1889, is among Munch's most celebrated early works, depicting a dying woman — inspired by his sister Sophie's death from tuberculosis — seated by a window in a Nordic spring interior. The bright light flooding in creates an almost unbearable contrast between the world's renewal and the figure's fading. It was this painting, submitted to a Christiania exhibition, that secured Munch his first major state scholarship for travel to Paris. The National Museum in Oslo holds it as a foundational work of Norwegian modern painting and Munch's own evolution.

The dramatic contrast between the intensely lit window and the shadowed interior is the compositional engine of the entire work. Munch renders spring light with bright, clean colour while the dying figure is painted in cooler, more subdued tones.