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 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, despite what the picture appears to show.
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.
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.
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 in May 1901 and painted this picture about five, not six, years later, in 1906.
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
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