| Christmas in the Brothel | |
| Other Language 1: | Norwegian |
| Other Title 1: | Julaften i bordell |
| Artist: | Edvard Munch |
| Year: | 1903–04 |
| Medium: | Oil on canvas |
| Height Metric: | 60 |
| Width Metric: | 88 |
| Metric Unit: | cm |
| Imperial Unit: | in |
| Museum: | Munch Museum |
| City: | Oslo |
Christmas in the Brothel (no|'''Julaften i bordell''') is an oil-on-canvas painting by Norwegian painter Edvard Munch. The Expressionist painting was completed in 1903–04 and is housed at the Munch Museum in Oslo.
The painting was done at a difficult time for Munch: a commission for a portrait in Hamburg (of a Senator Holthusen, the father in law of Munch's patron Max Linde) had come to naught because of disagreements. As a result, Munch suffered anxieties, which he attempted to manage with alcohol. A visit to a brothel in Lübeck is supposedly the background to Christmas in the Brothel, a "light yet melancholy" painting in which the working girls in a brothel have just finished decorating a Christmas tree. "Ironic, sentimentally unholy", the painting is interpreted as a commentary on both Linde's upper-class household (where Munch was staying at the time) and Munch's own "pietistic home background".[1] Like other paintings of the period, it shows Munch's association with Fauvism.[2] Prostitution was a favored topic of Munch's, and one particular room in a German brothel would later inspire an entire series of paintings, The Green Room.[3]