Comment:This is a very thoroughly composed pen and brush drawing. It depicts a better-off middle class home with handsome furniture, large indoor plants and statuettes. A male figure reaches up to light the ceiling lamp, or possibly to extinguish it. Had it not been for the female figure to the right, it could have been a normal everyday family scene. Her attitude, posture and position, however, bring an unmistakable erotic undertone to the situation. The two of them have just entered the room, but she remains standing in the doorway, where she has the possibility of retreating if necessary. She appears to be hesitant, yet expectant. She is obviously not his wife; otherwise she would have moved about the room with a totally different abandon. She is hardly a prostitute, who would have behaved much more provocatively. What we are most likely witness to is a bourgeois seduction scene as it would have appeared during the 1880s. And it is not without its comical effects: the man is stretching on his toes to such a degree that he seems almost to be floating – out of pure anticipation, perhaps. The erotic atmosphere is discreetly underscored by the naked female statuette in the corner that attempts to cover herself with her hands out of modesty, together with a reclining nude female statuette on the mirror-top table. As a kind of counterweight to this, the entire scene is being scrutinized by a female head placed high up on the wall – whether it is a bust or a painting is difficult to determine. There is a kind of naturalistic symbolism in this; the objects are given a detailed description, and via this description they speak to us, and thus acquire significance beyond themselves. The use of symbolism in Munch’s pictures eventually became more subtle and personal, yet this drawing is instructive as a point of reference. If we pay attention to the execution, the main figures are drawn relatively forcefully and dominate our first impression, while the details are more weakly described and partially hidden under a swarm of restless hatching. A rather intricate drawing, in other words, that one can spend a good deal of time examining. Yet it is anecdotal and casual, without any particular depth. Very much a genre picture, and very unlike Munch as we are accustomed to thinking of him.