Girl with child

Between 1901 and 1902, Paula Modersohn-Becker gradually moved away from pure landscape painting. First she painted landscapes with figures, then figures in front of a landscape and finally only figures – the people she wanted to portray in ‘runic script’. They are often represented in ‘close-up’. Children were a constant theme. She depicted them at different ages, her interest in portraying them as individuals progressively giving way to an emphasis on the psychological condition of childhood itself. This painting exemplifies the trend in her work towards two-dimensionality of form and colour, accompanied by a steadily waning interest in surface texture.

Source: J. Bijlsma, S. Kullmann, T. Wieteler (eds.), Paula Modersohn-Becker, Rotterdam 2006 and M. Ackermann et.al. (eds.), Paula Modersohn-Becker 1876-1907. Retrospektive, München 1997.