Modersohn-Becker shows a quiet moment of a resting mother feeding her small child. Her depiction of modern women from a woman’s perspective set her work apart from her contemporaries, with the majority of her paintings depicting women in a way other artists of the time did not.

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This painting lives at the East Side Gallery in Berlin, Germany, and is sometimes referred to as “Self-Portrait in Front of Flowering Trees.” Modersohn-Becker’s depictions of women, including herself, were honest and unembellished. Flowers were included in many of her paintings and here seem to frame her as part of the bloom, a sign of fertility.

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This work is yet another example of Modersohn-Becker’s penchant for depicting the everyday life of women in a realistic fashion. Modersohn-Becker painted mothers and children throughout her career. The artist herself would in fact die as a result of becoming a mother. In 1907, Modersohn-Becker gave birth to her only child, Mathilde. Complaining of leg pain, she was on bed rest for the weeks following the delivery of her child and died due to massive pulmonary thromboembolism shortly after doctors allowed her to leave her bed.

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Modersohn-Becker’s fascination with the world around her was clear in her work. In this painting, a young woman clutches a rabbit. It would be difficult to say which subject looks more nervous. Both look upward, taking in their surroundings. The sturdy body of the young woman is consistent with the painter’s depictions of rural women of the time period.

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Modersohn-Becker is probably best known for this self-portrait, said to be the first known nude self-portrait by a female painter. The timing of the painting is significant in that its contemporaries included Matisse’s “Blue Nude,” and Picasso’s “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon,” paintings that embellish the female form. Modersohn-Becker’s honest and joyful painting bucks that trend.

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Modersohn-Becker exemplified a new way of life for the modern woman at the turn of the 20th century. She married Otto Modersohn, a successful German landscape painter in 1901, but left him behind in Germany to pursue her own career in Paris. This painting of him was created in 1906 when they reconciled after years apart.

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Her husband was not the only famous artist that Paula Modersohn-Becker became close with. At age twenty-two, Modersohn-Becker became a part of the artist community of Worpswede, alongside creatives like Fritz Mackensen and Heinrich Vogeler. She studied with Mackensen and became close to sculptor Clara Westhoff and the poet Rainer Maria Rilke. The 1906 painting of Rilke was done on a trip to Paris, where Westhoff and Rilke lived together after they wed. After her death, Rilke wrote the poem "Requiem for a Friend" in Modersohn-Becker's memory.

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This painting, created in the final year of her life, shows a young, nude child standing in front of a goldfish bowl. Modersohn-Becker once again strays from conventional subject matter in this piece, choosing to depict the humble but profound beauty of an everyday scene.

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This self-portrait shows off the thick brushstrokes common in Modersohn-Becker’s work. It is slightly more abstract than many of her other paintings and perhaps a touch melancholy. The work was painted the year she passed away. In her fifteen years working, she completed over 1,000 drawn and printed pieces, and more than 700 paintings. Despite selling just a few during her lifetime, her legacy lives on.

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One of the last-known self-portraits from Modersohn-Becker, she stands with a camilla branch, an almost-smile on her face, as if she knows something that you do not. As her friend Rilke said, “(she paints) the things and objects… which nobody else had seen or could paint that way.”

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