THE Tate gallery came under attack yesterday for not displaying a Munch masterpiece that was donated to its collection by a Norwegian friend of the artist in the 1930s.
While the museum community reels from the loss of The Scream in a spectacular theft last weekend, the family of Thomas Olsen, a friend of Edvard Munch, said that the Tate is relegating to its storerooms a work of comparable worth.
The Sick Child, painted in 1907, was given to the Tate in 1939. Sue Prideaux, Olsen’s Anglo-Norwegian great-niece, who is writing a book on Munch, said: “My uncle Thomas bought it and gave it in to the Tate. After the Second World War, he was particularly keen that the picture would reflect his gratitude to England’s liberation of Norway. But it hasn’t been on show for years. It’s outrageous. It’s prevented my family from giving more to England.”
She spoke to The Times after two Munch works were stolen from the Munch Museum in Oslo.
The Sick Child is believed to have been partly inspired by the artist’s sister, Johanne Sofie, who died from tuberculosis in 1877, aged 15. His other sister, Laura, was later diagnosed as a schizophrenic.
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Ms Prideaux said: “She was admitted to a mental hospital in Oslo, which was next to the city abattoir. Screams of the animals and the crazy women could be heard at once. That was when he had his terrible vision of the sky turning to blood (in The Scream). His anxiety about whether he would go mad added to the horror.”
Munch found further inspiration for The Sick Child after accompanying his father, a doctor, to visit a child patient in 1885. He was struck by the grief of the boy’s sister at her brother’s suffering. In his picture, however, she became the sick child.
He once said: “With The Sick Child, I opened up new paths for myself. It became a breakthrough in my art. Most of my later works owe their existence to this picture.”
Thomas Olsen, who died in 1969, was the artist’s neighbour in the coastal town of Hvitsten. He bought several works, including a third version of The Scream, which remains in the family’s possession, on loan to the National Gallery in Washington.
Thomas’s son, Petter, a property developer in the Canary Islands who lives in London, said of The Sick Child: “My father was a strong Anglophile and wanted England to learn about Munch, who was almost unknown in Britain.
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“When he came to the Tate after the war and found that it was in the basement, he was extremely disappointed and told them so. They brought it up for display . . . I was really astonished to hear they put it in storage again. My father took it for granted that such an important painting would be on display.”
A Tate spokesman said yesterday that The Sick Child is an important painting in the collection, but its four galleries rotate works over time.
In the 13 years for which records have been kept, it has been shown twice at the Tate; in 1998 at Millbank and 2001 in Liverpool, each time for a year. It has also been loaned for seven months to Norwich Castle Museum and the National Gallery. “It will be shown again,” he said.
Selby Whittingham, director of Donor Watch, which monitors whether public collections are honouring the terms of bequests and donations, said: “It’s obviously upsetting for donors to give works and then for them not to be on view.
“This should be a cautionary tale for anyone thinking of giving something to the gallery.”