Everything I Have: Paula Modersohn-Becker and Motherhood

Paula Modersohn-Becker captured this paradox perfectly in her painting Reclining Mother with Child II.

The mother’s eyes are closed and her expression is hard to read, but surely she is weary. Tucked into the curve of her torso is an infant whose pose mirrors her own, at once of her body and apart from it. Modersohn-Becker portrayed motherhood with a seriousness and an intimacy rarely seen in 19th- and early 20th-century European art. Her body of work, created over the course of 10 intense years, contains tender but never saccharine representations of women, infants, and children. Yet for the artist, the concept of motherhood and, more broadly, the domestic demands placed upon women, was fraught, and she struggled with the balance between her own ambition and the expectation that she would bear children and take care of a household.

The young Modersohn-Becker wrote with a breathless excitement of her encounters with the wider world in a way that could be at odds with the traditional constraints of domestic life. Arriving in Paris for the first time on January 1, 1900, she wrote in her journal, “And now here I am living here in the bustle of this great city. Everything rushes and swirls around me in a damp and foggy atmosphere. … I feel blissfully clear, and serene. I can feel a new world arising in me.” Later, in a letter, she urged a friend who had recently given birth to reject the traditional model of homelife arranged around immediate family in favor of communal living, writing, “The deer gather in herds, and even the little titmice at our window have their own community, too, not merely that of the family.”

In 1900, however, Modersohn-Becker accepted a proposal of marriage from fellow artist Otto Modersohn, a widower with a young child. Though her parents had enthusiastically supported her artistic career early on, they now nudged her toward cultivating home-making skills and sent her to Berlin to study cooking. Her letters from that period mention almost nothing of the cooking classes, focusing instead on the art and museums that she encountered in the city. Less than a year into her marriage, she wrote in her journal, “My experience tells me that marriage does not make one happier.”

Still, other writings evince a deep-seated attraction towards motherhood. In 1903, while in Paris away from her family, she wrote to her husband, “I look at little children with love, and when I’m reading I look up words like swaddling and nursing and so on with great understanding. I have been very aware how these two years at your side have gently turned me into a woman. …”

I believe that there are only two very definite expectations left in me now: my art and my family.

—Paula Modersohn-Becker, letter to Otto Modersohn

While her writings may betray ambivalence, she often portrayed motherhood and domesticity with candor and affection. Sleeping Child from 1904 shows an overhead view of a young toddler; this perspective places us in the role of watcher and caretaker, standing over the child, gazing at them. As a mother, I know this perspective well; at the end of a long, draining day, I’ll often pause in awe of my children’s still, sleeping forms and the very fact of their existence. 

In 1906, Modersohn-Becker plotted for weeks to find the perfect moment to leave her home with Otto and her stepdaughter behind, absconding back to Paris and a life dedicated solely to art. “Now I have left Otto Modersohn and am standing between my old life and my new life. I wonder what the new one will be like,” she wrote. This was a bold, nearly unthinkable action.

I believe that if I am ever to get anywhere, I have to devote everything I have to it.

—Paula Modersohn-Becker, letter to father

Yet her determination to live and work independently was short-lived; a few days later, she wrote to Otto, inviting him to visit her in Paris. Otto traveled to Paris, and the two reunited; when they went back to their home in Germany, Modersohn-Becker was pregnant.

Modersohn-Becker’s mother described the day her daughter gave birth: “From one wall to the other this artists’ house is filled with happiness, and the little mother lies there holding her baby and her brown eyes are shining blissfully.” But the happiness was not to last. At the advice of her doctors, she stayed in bed for 18 days after the birth. When she was at last permitted to stand, a pulmonary embolism dislodged, taking her life. In the end, the question of motherhood was existential, and the danger of maternal mortality loomed over it all along. 

A musing that Modersohn-Becker recorded on a loose sheet of paper in 1902 has stayed with me:

“Today I read that in its first stages the heart of a human embryo is located in the head and only gradually moved down to the breast. It is a sweet thought that they are born so close to one another, heart and mind. That confirms my feeling. In my own case, I can hardly ever tell one from the other.”

Modersohn-Becker felt pulled in multiple directions: she possessed a pressing, urgent desire to make her mark as a singular artist, while she also professed a deep love for her husband and a desire to make a home and a family. Many people, and especially women, may identify with this desire to dedicate oneself solely and completely to two things at once, a goal that, a century onward, still remains elusive.

—Ginia Sweeney, director, Interpretation

The exhibition Paula Modersohn-Becker: I Am Me closes January 12, 2025.

Topics

• Exhibitions
• Modern Art
• European Painting and Sculpture