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Disappointed by the reception and rejection of The Sick Child, Munch reverted to a more common Naturalist style after 1886 in renditions of subjectively evocative landscapes and in portraits that more readily found a market than did his experimental bohemian works. In a daringly provocative, speculative gesture he collected his works into a large one-man exhibition at the Studentersamfund, Kristiania, in April and May 1889, an event unprecedented in Norway except in the contemporary celebration of the renowned, elderly academic landscape painter Hans Fredrik Gude.
The works Munch exhibited demonstrated his move from Impressionist experiment with form dissolved in the summer sun towards a more firmly modelled Naturalism in which effects of light were manipulated for emotive value. In place of the failed Sick Child he substituted a massive new painting on the same theme, Spring in which Munch concentrated on effects of sunlight pouring in through a brightly illuminated window, an emblem of hope set in contrast to the desperation of the convalescent girl and her concerned companion. With this remarkable demonstration of painterly bravura and a monumental portrait of Hans Jaeger after his release from prison as its centrepieces, the exhibition succeeded in obtaining for Munch a state grant to study drawing with Léon Bonnat in Paris.
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