Children with Lanterns

Paula Modersohn-Becker's Children with Lanterns, painted in 1901, belongs to her body of work depicting the children of Worpswede — the German artists' colony in the moorlands of Lower Saxony where she was based. The subject of children carrying lanterns has folk-festival associations, and Modersohn-Becker's treatment strips away sentimentality in favour of a direct, simplified observation of childhood as physical and psychological fact. Influenced by Cézanne and Gauguin, she was moving toward a proto-Expressionist vision of the human figure that would make her one of the most original painters of her generation.

Modersohn-Becker reduces the children to simplified, monumental forms, the lanterns' warm glow providing concentrated colour against a cool, dark ground. Her handling has the earthy directness characteristic of her mature work — paint applied with deliberate plainness that rejects academic smoothness.