Generous Donation: The Leopold Museum Receives an Eminent Painting by Paula Modersohn-Becker

28.10.2024

The Key Work of Modernism Represents an Important Addition to the Museum’s Collection of Expressionism

Thanks to a generous donator, the Leopold Museum was able to acquire the oil painting Mother and Child by Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907), created around 1904. The masterpiece by this pioneer of Expressionism hails from a German private collection and was purchased in early October at auction in London.

As soon as the auction catalogue was released, the Director of the Leopold Museum, Hans-Peter Wipplinger, pulled out all the stops to facilitate the purchase of the painting for the museum. With the financial aid of a private individual, he was able to acquire the painting at Christie’s for 380,000 euros.

“Owing to this act of art patronage, we were in a position to secure an outstanding work by the radical trailblazer of Modernism, Paula Modersohn-Becker, for our collection. We will now be able to make this key work of early 20th-century art accessible to the public at the Leopold Museum.”

Hans-Peter Wipplinger, Director of the Leopold Museum

Important Addition to the Permanent Presentation of German Expressionism

The work will complement the exhibits in the room devoted to German Expressionism, which has been on display since the summer at level 0 of the museum. Among the 17 works featured in this permanent presentation are further paintings by Modersohn-Becker shown as permanent loans. These paintings – both permanent loans from the collection of the Leopold Museum and from other lenders – are embedded into a selection of eminent works by exponents of German Expressionism – from Gabriele Münter and Marianne von Werefkin via Erich Heckel, Alexej von Jawlensky and Wassily Kandinsky all the way to Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, August Macke and Max Pechstein.

Desideratum for Austrian Museums

The Leopold Museum’s newly acquired painting by Modersohn-Becker is the only work by the artist in a public collection in Vienna, and as such is a definitive desideratum for Austrian museums. Only the Lentos Museum in Linz owns a work by the artist.

Paula Modersohn-Becker – A Life between Worpswede and Paris

The artist created numerous of her works in the North German artists’ colony Worpswede, which she had joined in 1898. The painter Otto Modersohn, whom she married three years later, was also a member of this artists’ colony. In the small village near Bremen, she created many child depictions, including the works, presented at the Leopold Museum, Elsbeth in Front of a Landscape Holding a Flower (1901) and the painting, created the same year, Three Seated Girls with Straw Hats and Flower Wreaths. Also on display is the 1903 work Seated Girl with Sheep at the Pond. The focus exhibition further includes the Portrait of an Italian Girl which Modersohn-Becker created in 1906 during her last stay in Paris. That year, she visited Maurice Denis, one of the main representatives of this artists’ group Nabis. Like him, the artist sought the “great simplicity of the form” (Paula Modersohn-Becker). A year later, in 1907, the artist died at the age of only 31, several weeks after the difficult birth of her daughter Mathilde. “Tille’s” life, by contrast, would span almost a century. She died in 1998 aged 90.

Turning Towards Female Motifs

“To the same extent to which she addressed construction aspects inherent in the image at the beginning of the avant-garde, the artist also embarked on new paths in terms of the content of her paintings. Her choice of subjects is remarkable especially for her inclination towards female motifs. Except for a few male portraits, like that of Rainer Maria Rilke and Otto Modersohn, her oeuvre is dominated by female figures, mother-and-child depictions, renderings of children and portraits of women”, as Hans-Peter Wipplinger explains in his essay Paula Modersohn-Becker. On the History of a Quest for an Artistic and Personal Identity (Hirmer Publishers, 2010). Her works, including her mother-and-child depictions, reflect the simple, rural life. The theme, which can be found predominantly in depictions of the Madonna in Christian art, was rendered by Modersohn-Becker in a human and intimate manner, symbolizing a sense of departure and a new beginning. Rather than Mary sitting enthroned with the infant Jesus, we are confronted with a plain woman, whose child, nestled on her lap, is looking at the world with a mixture of curiosity and apprehension.

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