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Seated Female Nude (Self-Portrait?)
About the Artwork
Although Paula Modersohn-Becker died in 1907, just as the Expressionist groups in Dresden and Munich were forming, the themes of her work prefigure the movement. This likely self-portrait exhibits her desire to convey not the idealized appearance of the female body but rather its fundamental essence, stripped of all the world’s trappings. She distilled the human body into flattened forms—achieved by erasing and blending the charcoal—and abbreviated the delineation of the feet, hands, and face. The sitter’s piercing stare invites the viewer to move beyond the body as flesh and blood toward her emotional or spiritual state.
Inscriptions
signed, lower left, in black crayon: p.m.b.; verso, sale stamp, lower right, in purple-gray ink: Samml. E. Rump / [pag.?] 102 [underlined] [Nr.?] 2 [underlined] [numerals are written in black ink]; upper center, in graphite: 76 [circled]; lower left, in graphite: 75 [circled, partially erased]; lower right, in black ink: Paula Modersohn Becker
Exhibition history
Year in Review: 1973. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (January 30-March 17, 1974). The Vocabulary of Prints. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (July 29-December 31, 1975). The Milieu of Edvard Munch. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (May 5-June 5, 1977). German Drawings of the 18th, 19th, and 20th Centuries. The Cleveland Museum of Art (April 1-July 13, 1980). Eastward from the Rhine: Romanticism to Abstraction, 1800-1925. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 12-September 9, 1984). Directions in Drawing II: The Human Figure. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (November 5, 1991-January 12, 1992). The German Tradition. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (April 27-June 27, 1993). Master Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (August 27-October 17, 2000); The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, NY (May 23-August 19, 2001); Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Houston, TX (October 14, 2001-January 6, 2002). Treasures on Paper from the Collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (March 9-June 8, 2014). Graphic Discontent: German Expressionism on Paper. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (January 14-May 27, 2018). Paula Modersohn-Becker: I Am Me. The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL (October 12, 2024-January 12, 2025) https://www.artic.edu/exhibitions/9592/paula-modersohn-becker-i-am-me.
Quick Overview
- Artist
- Paula Modersohn-Becker (German, 1876–1907)
- Date
- c. 1899
- Medium
- charcoal with stumping
- Dimensions
- Sheet: 62.2 x 33.9 cm (24 1/2 x 13 3/8 in.)
- Type
- Drawing
- Classification
- Drawing
- Department
- Drawings
- Credit line
- Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund
- Accession no.
- 1973.35
Provenance
after 1899-by 1921: Ernst Rump [1872-1921], Hamburg 1967: (probably Dr. Ernst Hauswedell, Hamburg, June 1967, no. 1006) probably 1967-1973: (Allan Frumkin Gallery, New York, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH) 1973-: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
More by Paula Modersohn-Becker in museum collections
Data retrieved from the Cleveland Museum of Art on October 8, 2026. The museum may have updated its record since.
Open-access museum record · AT-00011006
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