Internet Auction 747
This item is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 10/4/2020
Artist: Paula Modersohn-Becker
Title: The Merciful Samaritan
Medium: Fine Art Giclee on Canvas
Image Size: Approximately 13 ¼ inches x 20 inches
Framed: Unframed on Unstretched Canvas
Biography: In 1898, at age 22, Becker immersed herself in the artistic community of Worpswede, where artists such as Fritz Mackensen (1866–1953) and Heinrich Vogeler (1872–1942) had retreated to protest against the domination of the art academy style and life in the big city. She studied under Mackensen, painting the nearby farmers, and the northern German landscape. At this time she began close friendships with the sculptor Clara Westhoff (1875–1954) and the poet Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926).
Until the years when Becker began the practice, women painters had not widely used nude females as subjects for their work. The only notable exceptions to this dearth are works by Artemisia Gentileschi, three centuries earlier; for example, art historians assume that Gentileschi used her own body as the model for her work Susannah and the Elders. Becker's work on the female nude is unconventional and expresses an ambivalence to both her subject matter and the method of its representation.
Becker was trained in the methods of realism and naturalism, along with a recognizable simplicity of form. She was able to achieve a distinct texture to her work by scratching into the wet paint.[4 She later abandoned those techniques to move into Fauvism. There is evidence to suggest that a number of Paula Modersohn-Becker's self-portraits were influenced by the Pre-Raphaelite painter Dante Rossetti, including Self-portrait with a bowl and a glass (c.1904; Sander Collection), Self-portrait nude with amber necklace (1906; Private collection), and Self-portrait on my sixth wedding anniversary (1906; Museen Böttcherstrasse, Paula Modersohn- Becker Museum, Bremen).[5 She may also have influenced one or more of Picasso's paintings, as Diane Radycki posits in her 2013 monograph on the artist.
Warranty: Item GUARANTEED to be as described
Auction Estimate: $250.00/$450.00