Paula Modersohn-Becker

Paula Modersohn-Becker (8 February 1876 – 20 November 1907) was a German painter and draftswoman associated with early Expressionism. She is known for her many self-portraits, some of which are nudes, and is considered a key figure in the early Expressionist movement. Over her career, she created more than 700 paintings and over 1,000 drawings. She is recognized as the first known female painter to produce nude self-portraits, the first woman to have a museum dedicated solely to her work (the Paula Modersohn-Becker Museum, established in 1927), and likely the first woman artist to portray herself while pregnant. Her life and work ended abruptly when she died of a postpartum pulmonary embolism at age 31.

Born in Dresden’s Friedrichstadt district, she was the third of seven children. Her father, Carl Woldemar Becker, was an engineer for the German railway, born in Odessa to a Russian university professor of French. Her mother, Mathilde, came from the aristocratic von Bültzingslöwen family. The household was cultured and intellectual, but the family faced social constraints due to an incident in 1861: Carl’s brother, Oskar Becker, attempted to assassinate King Wilhelm of Prussia, shooting him in the neck. The king survived, and Oskar was pardoned five years later on condition he leave the country permanently, but the stigma lingered for Carl’s family.

In 1888, the family moved to Bremen, where Carl had secured a position with the Prussian Railway Administration. There, the Beckers mixed with local artistic and intellectual circles, and Paula began learning to draw. In the summer of 1892, she was sent to England to study English, living with a maternal aunt in London and receiving her first formal drawing instruction at St John’s Wood Art School. After returning to Bremen, she attended a teachers’ training school from 1893 to 1895, as her father wished (two sisters also enrolled), while also taking private painting lessons from local artist Bernhard Wiegandt.

She began working as a painter around age 16, setting up her first studio in an extension of her parents’ Bremen home (now Haus Paula Becker, with the studio preserved). From this period come portraits of her siblings and her first self-portrait (1893). She completed her teacher’s course with high marks but had little interest in teaching. In spring 1896, she traveled to Berlin for a six-week drawing and painting course organized by the Berlin Artists’ Association, staying with relatives. After finishing, she remained in Berlin and was admitted to the first painting class at the Women’s Academy in February 1897. She also visited Berlin’s art museums to study German and Italian works. An encounter with feminist advocate Natalie von Milde left a strong impression, but her family quickly intervened to end that connection.

Returning to Bremen, she persuaded her family to let her attend a course at the nearby artists’ colony in Worpswede. She had first encountered the colony in 1895, when Fritz Mackensen, Otto Modersohn, Fritz Overbeck, and Heinrich Vogeler exhibited at the Kunsthalle Bremen. The colony had formed as a protest against academic art and city life, and to save money. Becker joined in 1898, initially studying under Mackensen. She formed close friendships with sculptor Clara Westhoff, painter Ottilie Reylaender, and poet Rainer Maria Rilke. However, she quickly found Worpswede unsuitable for her developing style, writing in her journal that Mackensen’s approach was “not broad enough, too genre-like for me.” Two paintings she exhibited at the Bremen Kunsthalle in December 1899 were harshly criticized and removed after an attack by art critic Arthur Fitger, who was later seen as more offended by the presence of female artists than by the works themselves. While the Worpswede community remained focused on romanticized landscapes, her interests shifted toward Paris, leaving her feeling increasingly out of place.