MEASUREMENTS: 14"WX18"H FRAMED, MINT CONDITION/"in the style of"Paula Modersohn-Becker was a German painter and one of the most important representatives of early expressionism. Her career was cut short when she died from postpartum embolism at the age of 31. She is recognized as the first known female painter to paint nude self-portraits.In April 1900 the great Centennial Exhibition was held in Paris. On this occasion Fritz Overbeck and his wife, along with Otto Modersohn, arrived in June. Modersohn's ailing wife Helen had been left in Worpswede and died during his trip to Paris. With this news Modersohn and the Overbecks rushed back to Germany.Otto Modersohn Sleeping, Paula Modersohn-Becker (1906)In 1901 Paula married Otto Modersohn and became stepmother to Otto's two-year-old daughter, Elsbeth Modersohn, the child from his first marriage. She functioned in that capacity for two years, then relocated to Paris again in 1903. She and Modersohn lived mostly apart from that time forward until 1907, when she returned to Germany. In a letter to Rainer Maria Rilke written from Worpswede on 17 February 1906, signs of a troubled marriage emerge: "And now, I don't even know how I should sign my name, I'm not Modersohn and I'm not Paula Becker anymore either"."Less than a month later she writes from Paris to her husband, "try to get used to the possibility of the thought that our lives can go separate ways"/Private collection, no documentation.