edvard munch was born in a farmhouse in the village of adalsbruk in loten, Norway. his father, Christian Munch, was a son of a preist ,a docter and a medical officer who married a woman half his age named catherine biolstad in 1861. Edvard had three younger siblings named Peter Andreas (1865), Laura Catherine (1867), and Inger Marie (1868), and one older sister, Johanne Sophie (1862). Edvard and his older sister seemed to have inherited their artistic talent from their mother.Edvard was also related to painter Jacob Munch and historian Peter Andreas Munch
The family moved in 1864 to what is now known as Oslo. Edvards mother and favorite sister Johanne Sophie died of tuberculosis in 1868 and 1877. After the mothers death Edvard and his siblings were raised by their father and aunt Karen. Edvard was often ill for most of the winters and he kept out of school so to keep occupied he would draw.
Edvards father had a positive behavior toward his children, but it was shadowed by his morbid pietism. Munch wrote, "My father was temperamentally nervous and obsessively religious-to the point of psychoneurosis. From him i inherited the seeds of madness." Christian would tell his children their mother was looking down on them and greiving over their misbehavior. Edvard's poor health and the vivid ghost stories, helped inspire visions and nightmares in Edvard, who felt death constantly advancing on him. One of his younger sisters was diagnosed with a mental illness at an early age. Of the five siblings only Andreas married, and died a few months after his wedding.
Christans military pay was very low, so his family was kept in poverty, and they moved frequently. Munch's early drawings and watercolors depicted these interiors, and the individual objects like medicine bottles and drawing implements, plus a few landscapes, and by his teens art dominated his interests.