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 Germanexpressionist painter Paula Modersohn-Becker during her stay in Paris in 1906.[2]
In February 1906, Modersohn-Becker moved to Paris from Worpswede, a small town near near Bremen, Germany. She had decided to leave her husband and Worpswede forever, and devoted herself entirely to art.[citation needed]
Description
She is turned to the right in front of the viewer and 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, despite what the picture appears to show.[1]
Paula Modersohn-Becker painted another nude self-portrait in Paris during the summer of 1906, which is in the Kunstmuseum Basel in Switzerland. As far as is known, these nudes were not displayed during her lifetime to outsiders, but they became known after her death in November 1907.[citation needed]
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 located at the Paula Modersohn-Becker Museum in Bremen, the first museum devoted to a female artist.[1]
Translated title
The painting's customary title in German is Selbstbildnis am 6. Hochzeitstag, word-for-word: "Self-portrait on the 6th wedding-day." In this context, "6th wedding-day" corresponds to the fifth, not the sixth, wedding anniversary (the first wedding-day being the day of the wedding). Paula Becker married Otto Modersohn on 25 May 1901 and painted this picture on 25 May 1906—that is, five, not six, years later.[3]
↑Schmidt, Frank and others (2019). Ich bin ich—Paula Modersohn-Becker—Die Selbstbildnisse (in German) ("I Am Me—Paula Modersohn-Becker—The Self-Portraits"). Distributed by Hirmer Verlag for the publisher: Museen Böttcherstraße, Paula Modersohn-Becker Museum, Bremen. ISBN 978-3-7774-3397-4. The catalogue for an exhibition of the same name in Bremen, 15 September 2019 to 9 February 2020. For the date of her marriage to Otto Modersohn, see page 138; for the date of the painting, see page 144.
Hansmann, Doris (2000). Akt und nackt – Der ästhetische Aufbruch um 1900 mit Blick auf die Selbstakte von Paula Modersohn-Becker[Nude and naked – The aesthetic departure around 1900 with regard to the nude self-portraits of Paula Modersohn-Becker] (in German). Weimar: VDG.
Stamm, Rainer; Wipplinger, Hans-Peter, eds. (2010). "Paula Modersohn-Becker. Leben und Werk im Spiegel ihrer Selbstporträts" [Paula Modersohn-Becker. Life and work in the mirror of her self-portraits]. Paula Modersohn-Becker. Pionierin der Moderne[Paula Modersohn-Becker. Pioneer of Modernity] (in German). München: Hirmer Verlag. pp.9–24.
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