Sitzendes Mädchen mit grüner Kette

Although a portrait of a child, the painting of the seated girl proves unsettling at first glance. The posture appears atypical for a child: stiff and motionless, she stares at the viewer, while her dress, painted in brown tones, merges into the dark background, thus highlighting the child’s pale face, which appears to have a luminance all of its own. Paula Modersohn-Becker uses a multitude of short and extremely animated brushstrokes to depict the girl’s features and thus emphasizes her large blue eyes.

The girl’s expression, however, remains a mystery—its earnestness already appears to point to a time beyond childhood and is characteristic of Modersohn-Becker’s portraits of children. In this painting, the artist, who was closely associated with the artists’ colony in Worpswede and who died at the age of 31, presents us with a sober but no less sensitive view of childhood, as opposed to its sentimental romanticization.