'The Sick Child' became one of Munch's most powerful motifs, which he explored in various media between 1885 and 1896. The image came from the experience of the death of his sister Sophie in 1877, though he also drew from a young model and from his own aunt for the distraught mother. Beneath the main subject a little landscape, faintly registered, serves as a poignant symbol of the child's tenuous hold on a life which is slipping away. This drypoint is based on the initial painted version begun in the winter of 1885 and, in turn, in 1896 evolved into a colour lithograph and a colour etching of just the head of the child, both explored in multiple versions.