Lot 242 Dα

Impressed by the primitive landscape, Paula Becker moved to Worpswede in 1898 in order to continue her studies with the painter Fritz Mackensen. There she met her future husband Otto Modersohn, whom she would marry in 1901. It was also with him that she became acquainted with Rainer Maria Rilke, who married her best friend, the sculptor Clara Westhoff. During her first years in Worpswede she created drawings from nature and compositional sketches that were often not carried out until later, for example, after her return from her first journey to Paris, where she encountered the works of the French avant-garde. In the years following 1900 Worpswede's landscape was her main theme; landscapes with figures and images of figures set directly in the midst of nature move shift into the focus of her attention. This applies in particular to the Worpswede farm children, whom she depicted individually or in groups, absorbed with their own world, isolated at the margins of events or playing with one another in an agricultural setting. Even if, as is the case here, there seems to be a certain distance between the artist and the group of children, she nonetheless observes the children's different presences and their playful dynamic within the group. Undistracted, uninhibited, affectionate and unsentimental in her response to their encounter, Modersohn-Becker depicts the village children in the space in front of a thatch-roofed shed. The artist recounts a fraction of a moment: a rearranging among the children before the event that seems to be about to take place. In her inimitable style Modersohn-Becker forms the confluence of the various details into a characteristic landscape with children, a warm-hearted homage to her picturesque surroundings.