14 - Paula Modersohn-Becker

Paula Modersohn-Becker Mädchenkopf Circa 1905 Oil on canvas. 26.3 x 24.5 cm. Framed. Unsigned. - Craquelure in the pastose areas. Busch 562 Provenance Erich Fiedeler, Hanover (1916); thenceforth, family ownership, North Germany Exhibitions Hagen 1913 (Folkwang Museum), Paula Modersohn-Becker, cat. no. 41; Bremen 1913 (Kunsthalle), Paula Modersohn-Becker, Journal Nr. 23; Hanover 1934 (Kestner-Gesellschaft), Paula Modersohn-Becker, cat. no. 51 Literature Gustav Pauli, Paula Modersohn-Becker (Monographie und Werkverzeichnis), 2nd edition Leipzig 1922, cat. no. 126 Paula Modersohn-Becker dedicated herself with particular intensity to portraits of children in her work. Without sentimentality and with empathy as well as genuine attentiveness, she depicted the children of local families during her Worpswede period. But, for her, it was never a matter of posed, pretty portraits: her images of children are neither saccharine nor bourgeois ornamentation. In spite of the poverty and harsh reality of life in the world of Worpswede’s farmers around the turn of the century, social criticism is also foreign to her. Instead, the painter seeks to connect with her young models, their personality and their human dignity in an unadulterated and direct manner. She uses a deliberately simplified and two-dimensional style of painting to present the children in the picture. Influences from the multiple educational journeys she had made to Paris since 1900 are revealed here. “The emphatic two-dimensionality and ornamental lineation, the silhouette-like demarcation from the background, clearly point to the circle surrounding the French Nabis painters”, writes Christa Murken-Altrogge (in: Paula Modersohn-Becker. Kinderbildnisse, Munich 1977, pp. 54f.). The girl in our portrait nearly fills the picture plane and is set before an undefined background. Her skin tones are applied in vigorous, thick brushstrokes; the strikingly red lips and the blue, apparently lace-trimmed collar establish chromatic accents. It is nonetheless the eyes that provide this portrait with its distinctive expression. Although the girl’s face is turned directly towards the viewers, her gaze passes beyond them, earnestly and pensively looking out into an undefined realm.