Interior with a Child. Lothar Linde 1902

Edvard Munch made this etching, Interior with a Child, using delicate lines and a muted palette. It’s like he scratched these images into existence, maybe wrestling with the plate, pushing and pulling to get the scene just right. I imagine him in his studio, hunched over, squinting, trying to capture a fleeting moment. You can see the uncertainty in the lines themselves, how they waver and break, searching for definition. There’s a doorframe that almost dissolves into the wall and then a small figure of a child, rendered with tenderness and a sense of vulnerability. There's something very intimate about this little scene; it feels like a memory, a whisper from the past. Munch was always obsessed with the psychology of human experience, and you see that here in the way he uses this interior space to evoke a mood of quiet contemplation. It reminds me a little of Vuillard, who was also trying to find ways of looking at the everyday. All these painters – they’re in conversation with one another across time.