Colour lithograph printed in yellow, red and green on thin Japan paper
Sheet: 785x491-493 mm Image: 695x400 mm
Signed in pencil lower right: Edv Munch
1902
Woll 198.
Estimate
NOK 1,200,000–1,500,000USD 133,800–167,300EUR 119,200–149,000
LITERATURE: Frank Høifødt: “Tulla Larsen”, Edvard Munch Works on Paper, exhibition catalogue Munch Museum 2.11.2013-02.03.2014, Oslo 2013, p. 176-191.
In the summer of 1902 the relationship between Munch and Tulla Larsen ended in a dramatic fashion with a shot accidentally fired. It was Munch himself who was fingering a pistol, when it went off and hit his middle finger on his left hand. The Sin has been linked to Tulla, but the print was made earlier, and is not a portrait of her.
“Sin” is … based on an unknown model in Munch’s studio in Berlin, created during the long break in the relationship.
“Sin” reminds us of the dangers of a simplistic biographical approach. The Tulla story undoubtedly lives on in Munch’s life and art, but in a complex and ambiguous way. Before the shooting episode, Tulla is recognizable as a historical person and a traditional model. After 1902 “Tulla” can be put in quotation marks. With its caricatured features and cultural markers her image has been transformed into a one-dimensional role on Munch’s stage, where it largely merges with clichés of the “femme fatale” current at the time. P. 187-190.
