Alte Bäuerin

Alte Bäuerin (Old Peasant Woman) from 1904, at the Bavarian State Painting Collections, belongs to Modersohn-Becker's series of portraits of elderly rural women — some of the most powerful figurative works she produced. She was drawn to the faces of the very old with an intensity that connects to her deeper interest in life's elemental stages: birth, childhood, labor, age, and death. These old women, residents of the Worpswede area whom she painted and drew repeatedly, are depicted with an unflinching directness that anticipates Expressionism while maintaining a connection to the realist observation of Leibl and the Munich school.

The face is the entire compositional event — there is no background to speak of, and the figure fills the picture space with monumental simplicity. The skin of an old woman is painted with attention to its specific quality: creased, weathered, carrying a lifetime of outdoor work and exposure.