Infant with her ​​mother's hand 1903

Paula Modersohn-Becker made this painting of an infant with her mother’s hand using oil on canvas. Look how Modersohn-Becker builds up the form of the baby’s head. The colors are scrubbed on and layered, creating a kind of textured surface like raw clay. There’s a beautiful awkwardness to how the figures are rendered. The infant's gaze seems both knowing and vulnerable, a testament to the artist's skill in capturing complex emotions with simple forms. The rosy colors of the baby’s skin and clothing give off a gentle glow. Then there’s the hand of the mother, so much darker, so much more defined, with its clear outline. There’s something about the directness in the gaze of the baby, and the solid, sculptural quality of the forms, that reminds me of Cézanne. Both were radical, in their own ways, and both really understood what it means to build a painting through layers of color and form. It’s a painting that embraces the raw, unfiltered beauty of life.