Self-Portrait at 6th Wedding Anniversary

Self-Portrait at 6th Wedding Anniversary (German:Selbstbildnis am 6. Hochzeitstag), also known as Self-Portrait on the sixth wedding anniversary and Self-Portrait on the sixth anniversary of marriage, is a painting by the German painter Paula Modersohn-Becker, one of the most important early expressionists, from the time of her stay in Paris in 1906.

Self-portrait at 6th wedding anniversary
German: Selbstbildnis am 6. Hochzeitstag
ArtistPaula Modersohn-Becker
Year1906 (1906)
Mediumtempera on canvas
Dimensions101.8 cm × 70.2 cm (40.1 in × 27.6 in)
LocationPaula Modersohn-Becker Museum, Bremen

Painting

Self-Portrait at 6th Wedding Anniversary was painted in Paris. Modersohn-Becker had moved from Worpswede near Bremen in Germany in February 1906. She had decided to leave her husband and Worpswede forever, and devote herself entirely to art. This self-portrait was painted in the spring. She is turned to the right in front of the viewer and she watches the viewer with a searching and questioning look. She has a white cloth on her hip. Her upper body is naked and on her neck she wears an amber necklace.

When Paula Modersohn-Becker painted this self-portrait, she was not pregnant, as the picture appears to show.

Paula Modersohn-Becker painted another nude self-portrait in Paris during the summer of 1906, now in the Kunstmuseum Basel in Switzerland. As far as we know, these nudes were not shown during her lifetime to outsiders, but they became known after her death in November 1907.

Provenance

The painting was owned by Paula Modersohn-Becker's mother in 1908. By 1916 it was owned by her daughter Tille Modersohn and loaned to Bernhard Hoetger in Worpswede. In 1927, it was loaned by Ludwig Roselius to the Paula Becker-Modersohn-Haus in Bremen, Germany. It was purchased in 1988 and is today at the Paula Modersohn-Becker Museum in Bremen, the first museum devoted to a female artist.

Sources
  • Doris Hansmann: Akt und nackt – Der ästhetische Aufbruch um 1900 mit Blick auf die Selbstakte von Paula Modersohn-Becker, VDG, Weimar 2000
  • Rainer Stamm: Paula Modersohn-Becker. Leben und Werk im Spiegel ihrer Selbstporträts i Rainer Stamm och Hans-Peter Wipplinger (redaktörer): Paula Modersohn-Becker. Pionierin der Moderne, Hirmer Verlag, München 2010, sidorna 9–24

References
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