Edvard Munch, The woman (The sphynx), lithograph,1899

This lithography is the counterpart to a painting of 1894 housed at the Ramsus Meyer Collection in Bergen. The work, also known as the Sphinx, exists in another two recorded printed versions. The print shows three stages of a women's life, on the right a young girl wearing a long light coloured dress looks with hope towards the future, at the centre a naked woman with her legs outspread represents sexual desire and passion, while on the left a wide-eyed and gaunt faced woman dressed in black symbolizes disillusionment. The man in the painting wearing a pained expression is perhaps a self-portrait of the artist himself.