Young Girl With Straw Hat And A Flower In Her Hand 1902

Paula Modersohn-Becker made this portrait, "Young Girl With Straw Hat And A Flower In Her Hand," with oil on canvas. The paint looks pretty thin, like watercolor almost, in the light blue background. But elsewhere it looks like the pigment has been pushed around, maybe with her fingers, to give a kind of matte, chalky feel. I wonder, was it important for her to capture a likeness of this young woman? The hat is cool, but she looks so serious! What was on her mind? Was she even there? Modersohn-Becker painted herself a lot, and I know she thought of her paintings as versions of herself. There’s something appealing about the raw way that the artist approached the subject, which, in the end, feels like she wanted to express not just the visible world, but her subjective state of being. Painting is a kind of conversation and exchange of ideas across time, and artists like her inspire my creativity. What do you think?