The only influences in [the painting 'The sick Child', Munch painted in his elderly home, remembering very accurate the last days of his dying little sister Sophie] 'The sick Child'.... were the ones that come from my home.... my childhood and my home. Only someone who knew the conditions at home could possibly understand why there can be no conceivable chance of any other place having played a part – my home is to my art as a midwife is to her children.... few painters have ever experienced the full grief of their subject as I did in 'The sick child'. It was not just I who was suffering; it was all my nearest and dearest as well.

Edvard Munch talks to Jens Tiis, (c. 1933), Munch Museum; as quoted in Edvard Much – behind the scream, Sue Prideaux; Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2007, pp. 85-86