Self-portrait at 6th wedding anniversary (), also known as Self-portrait on the sixth wedding anniversary and Self-portrait on the sixth anniversary of marriage, is a painting by the German expressionist painter Paula Modersohn-Becker during her stay in Paris in 1906.
Background In February 1906, Modersohn-Becker moved to Paris from Worpswede, a small town near near Bremen, Germany. She had decided to leave her husband and Worpswede forever, and devote herself entirely to art.
Description She is turned to the viewer's right and watches the viewer with a searching and questioning look. She has a white cloth on her hip. Her upper body is bare. She wears an amber necklace.
When Modersohn-Becker painted this self-portrait, she was not pregnant, despite what the picture appears to show.
She painted another nude self-portrait in Paris during the summer of 1906, which is in the Kunstmuseum Basel in Switzerland. As far as is known, these nudes were not displayed during her lifetime to outsiders, but they became known after her death in November 1907.
Provenance The painting was owned by Modersohn-Becker's mother in 1908. By 1916, it was owned by her daughter, Tille Modersohn, and loaned to Bernhard Hoetger in Worpswede. In 1927, it was loaned by Ludwig Roselius to the Paula Becker-Modersohn-Haus in Bremen, Germany. It was purchased in 1988, and is located at the Paula Modersohn-Becker Museum in Bremen, the first museum devoted to a female artist.
Title The painting's customary title in German is Selbstbildnis am 6. Hochzeitstag, word-for-word: "Self-portrait on the 6th wedding-day." In this context, "6th wedding-day" corresponds to the fifth, not the sixth, wedding anniversary (the first wedding-day being the day of the wedding). Paula Becker married Otto Modersohn on 25 May 1901 and painted this picture on 25 May 1906—that is, five, not six, years later.Schmidt, Frank and others (2019). Ich bin ich—Paula Modersohn-Becker—Die Selbstbildnisse (in German) ("I Am Me—Paula Modersohn-Becker—The Self-Portraits"). Distributed by Hirmer Verlag for the publisher: Museen Böttcherstraße, Paula Modersohn-Becker Museum, Bremen. ISBN 978-3-7774-3397-4. The catalogue for an exhibition of the same name in Bremen, 15 September 2019 to 9 February 2020. For the date of her marriage to Otto Modersohn, see page 138; for the date of the painting, see page 144.
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