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#247

Old Woman with Hat

Modersohn-Becker, Paula ((1876-1907)) | Painter

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“Living in the artists’ colony in the village of Worpswede, Paula Modersohn-Becker was surrounded by a moorland landscape shaped by the simple rhythms of farming life. The local women and children were important models in her work. She depicts this old woman in what is evidently traditional costume and carrying a toddler – and sets them both very close to the viewer! They almost fill the entire space, right to the edges of the frame – and so these two figures have a vibrant presence.”


For curator Birgit Dalbajewa, Old Woman with Hat is especially characteristic of Modersohn-Becker’s works. It was painted in 1905 in Worpswede near Bremen – when the artist had already been living in the village for seven years. Incidentally, although people sometimes think Paula Modersohn-Becker was from Bremen, she was actually born in Dresden in 1876 as Paula Becker. Her visits to the Dresden collections were an integral part of her early encounters with art.

In Worpswede, where she married the artist Otto Modersohn, she developed her own distinctive style of painting. Take a closer look at the old woman with her hat and the child. Modersohn-Becker has painted the figures in simplified, almost archaic forms, rendering them in a similar palette to the natural world around them. She wants to express the essential being of her figures, the woman caring for the child, the child’s keen attentiveness, the familiar security of their surroundings. With her unconventional painting technique, Paula Modersohn-Becker creates a lively surface – as curator Andreas Dehmer explains:

"Standing in front of the work, you can see just how expressive her painting style is, how she loosely juxtaposes the colours – and also, when necessary, does not hesitate to turn the brush around and use the handle rather than the bristles to scratch into the paint.”

 

 

 

Material & Technique
Oil on cardboard on hardboard
Museum
Galerie Neue Meister
Dating
around 1905
Inventory number
Leih-Nr. L 160
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