Girl with Rabbit

Girl with Rabbit from 1904, at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, shows a child holding a live rabbit — a pastoral motif connecting to the older German tradition of the Worpswede colony where Modersohn-Becker worked. She was drawn repeatedly to children and young girls as subjects, approaching them with a non-sentimentalizing directness that distinguished her from many contemporaries. The girl and rabbit are both treated as part of the natural world, bound together by the same elemental physicality that characterizes all of Modersohn-Becker's figure work. The Stedelijk Museum, as a major institution for modern art, holds this as part of its representation of German Expressionist precursors.

The child's form is simplified into a few large, confident masses — there is no fussy detail in the face or clothing, but a directness of observation that gives the figure a powerful presence. The rabbit is rendered with the same attentive simplicity as the girl herself.