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| Image | Sale date | Auction house | Location | Sale name | Lot No. | Estimate | Price Sold | Condition | Title |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Nov 29, 2019 | Lempertz | Cologne | Modern Art I | 214 | $****** - ****** | Brustbild zweier Jungen vor Landschaft | |||
Nov 30, 2018 | Lempertz | Cologne | Modern Art | 202 | $****** - ****** | Brustbild zweier Jungen vor Landschaft |
paintings
36.1 x 29 cm (14.21 x 11.42 in)
Oil tempera on artist's board
Unsigned. On the verso, inscribed "19" by Otto Modersohn in blue and red pen verso and inscribed "45" in pencil (former purchase price)
Private possession, Rhineland, in third generation
Likenesses of this kind are not uncommon in Paula Modersohn-Becker's oeuvre. However, the suddenness in the artist's presentation of the two boys' heads is nonetheless initially astounding, and it completely captures viewers' attention as they study the faces. Set in front of a distant landscape, Modersohn-Becker places the two boys within the picture like two busts. The one on the left is seen almost in full face, with his right shoulder raised somewhat; he nearly conceals the second boy, who is looking to the right. With his blue eyes, the boy on the left scrutinises us in an undefined manner. The one standing behind him behaves similarly: his almost emotionless gaze - serious, expressionless, with no hint of a smile in his eyes - is turned in a different direction, away from us. The leaves extending into the image above the two boys suggest protective crowns. According to Wolfgang Werner, the boy shown on the left is probably the same model depicted in “Brustbild eines Jungen vor Apfelbäumen” (see Günter Busch/Wolfgang Werner, Paula Modersohn-Becker, Werkverzeichnis der Gemälde, Munich 1998, vol. II, p. 131, cat. no. 170).
In 1898, when Paula Becker settled in Worpswede as an aspiring artist, the new landscape not far from Bremen exercised a direct influence on her pictorial world and her painting. She painted, or rather, she created a portrait of the landscape with its slender birch trees, meadows framed by the dark canals of the fen and the people who lived there. “Painting uncompromisingly and straightforwardly, things that are very typical of Worpswede and which no one else had ever been able to see and paint”, is how Rilke describes the young painter in a letter to the Wuppertal collector Karl von der Heydt (cited in Heinrich Wiegand Petzet, Das Bildnis des Dichters, Frankfurt a. M., 1957, p. 68).
Modersohn-Becker often drew situations featuring children in extreme close-up, thus concentrating more strongly on what was essential: the view of a deeply human statement. In this context her passionate emotionality is far from social agitation and equally far from a romanticisation of farmers' poverty. Pictures like these reveal her profound bond with the children; she understands how to present this not just thematically, but also formally.
Paula Modersohn-Becker
Dresden 1876 - 1907 Worpswede
Brustbild zweier Jungen vor Landschaft
Circa 1901
Oil tempera on artist's board. 36.1 x 29 cm. Framed. Unsigned. - On the verso, inscribed "19" by Otto Modersohn in blue and red pen verso and inscribed "45" in pencil (former purchase price). - The card slightly convex, especially the upper margin slightly irregularly cut and minimally rubbed. The corners with small nail holes, remnants of a white paper label verso.
