Focus on Death and the Child and discuss the History.
The painting was purchased in 1918 by the Kunsthalle Bremen. The director of the Kunsthalle Emil Waldmann paid DM 20.000  for the painting, which was the first Munch painting to be acquired for a German museum.
Upon request of the Munch museum in Oslo, which wanted to list the complete works of Munch and needed exact data, the Bremen Art Society let the painting be examined more closely. X-Ray images then led  to the discovery that a second canvas of the same format with another painting of Munch was underneath the painting Death and the Child. This piece of art is unsigned and undated, is from a time around 1895 to 1898 and shows a daintily seated act of a girl next to several big, brightly coloured mask-like heads and gripping hands. It bears the title Girl and Three Male Heads. The painting Death and the Child, purchased in 1918, was wound up on a new stretcher bar after this discovery.
Why the second painting was underneath the canvas is unclear. The piece of art that, according to museum curator Dorothee Hansen was “not a masterpiece”, possibly served as a supporting canvas for Death and the Child and was used this way due to a lack of material or because it did not meet the standards of the artist. Numerous finger prints on the edges of the painting lead to the conclusion that the artwork was often moved back-and-forth when the paint had not dried up , so that it can be assumed that Munch dealt with the composition over a longer timespan.
Both paintings were shown in 2011/2012 in the exhibition Edvard Munch – Rätsel hinter der Leinwand in Bremen.
Edvard Munch Kunsthalle Bremen Oslo X-Ray images complete works Bremen stretcher bar