Stillende Mutter

1900

At Vollard’s: Cézanne, who struck her like a thunderstorm

Together with Clara Westhoff Paula goes to exhibitions and galleries; Clara later recalled a visit to Ambroise Vollard, where the then unknown Paul Cézanne made an indelible impression on Paula. In a letter to Clara, Paula compared the effect of his painting to a thunderstorm.

1900

Rainer Maria Rilke in Worpswede: “a true friend”

At about this time Paula meets the poet Rainer Maria Rilke: he took Clara Westhoff and Paula for sisters and in his diary called them the fair and the dark artists; Clara he regarded as an artist, but Paula was for him “a true friend”, and he dedicated poems to her that were later published in his “Book of Images”. Other accounts place the start of their friendship in 1898.

1900

The World’s Fair: Otto Modersohn in Paris, Helene’s death

The World’s Fair opens in Paris in April 1900; the Overbecks and the landscape painter Otto Modersohn, whose work Paula admires, come to see it. His wife Helene, ill, had stayed behind in Worpswede and soon died while her husband was in Paris, and Modersohn and the Overbecks hurried back to Germany.

12 September 1900

Engagement to Otto Modersohn

While Paula recovers from her Paris life, Otto Modersohn sometimes keeps her company; feelings grow between them, and on 12 September 1900, three months after Helene’s death, they announce their engagement.

1901

Married: Otto Modersohn

spring 1903

A second trip to Paris: the Louvre, the Rilkes and Rodin

In spring 1903, with her husband’s consent, Paula returns to Paris for two months: she spends much time in the Louvre copying ancient and Egyptian models (her later self-portraits echo the Fayum portraits), visits exhibitions with the Rilkes and studies Japanese colour woodcuts with interest. Rilke introduces her to Auguste Rodin, presenting her as the wife of a well-known painter; Rodin shows her his studio and invites her to his pavilion in Meudon.