Autumn on the Moor

In 1895, the Worpswede Künstlervereinigung (Artists’ Association) achieved its artistic breakthrough at the Munich Glaspalast, where, following the model of the Paris Salon, annual international exhibitions had been held since 1889. The atmospheric painting Autumn on the Moor was one of the eight works that Modersohn exhibited. In April of the same year, it was shown at the first exhibition of the Worpswede painters in Bremen, and subsequently purchased by friends of the arts for the Kunstverein zu Bremen. It displays a typical Worpswede heath and moor landscape, partially flooded with water, as well as two birch trees and a farm with a thatched roof beneath low, billowing clouds. Rainer Maria Rilke recognized Modersohn’s particular gift of vivid description and of feeling compassion, referring to his esteemed friend in his Worpswede Monographie of 1902 as a “seeing person with an expansive soul, in which everything became color and landscape.” In preparation for the Bremen painting, Modersohn produced a drawing of the same name (Inv. No. 1966/498). It is one of the “evening pages” that his wife, Paula Modersohn-Becker, especially treasured as “the most immediate expression of his feeling.”