Autumn/Winter 2022

Like many female painters, Paula struggled
with the conventional expectations of her as a
woman, and the difficulty of reconciling marriage
and motherhood with her need to express herself
as an artist. Her engagement in 1901 to Otto
Modersohn came only months after his first wife’s
death. The swiftness of this event, combined with
the 11-year age gap between the two, concerned
Paula’s parents only slightly less than the fact that
her cooking skills were inadequate to keep her
husband properly fed. They made it a condition
of the marriage that she take cooking lessons.
Sent to live with an aunt in Berlin to attend a twomonth
course, Paula described it as a “culinary
century” and was filled with longing to return to
her studio and paintbrushes.
Paula quickly discovered that marriage did not
bring her the happiness she expected. In the
first year of her marriage, she “cried a great deal
and the tears often come like the great tears of
childhood.” She was happier when she was away
from Otto, and happier still when on her own
in Paris, drinking in the paintings at the Louvre,
taking drawing classes and, always, painting. In a
letter to her sister, written during her final trip to
Paris in May of 1906, Paula wrote, “I am becoming
somebody—I’m living the most intensively happy
period of my life.” In September of that year, Otto
arrived in Paris for a six-month stay, and by the
following March Paula had fallen pregnant.
Paula Modersohn-Becker gave birth to her
daughter, Mathilde, on November 2, 1907.
Autumn / Winter 2022 • Restoration Conversations 81