Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876-1907) was the first German painter  to assimilate
the Post-Impressionist currents she discovered for herself  in Paris
and to forge a very personal style, creating some unquestioned
 masterpieces during her brief career.
Paula Becker was born on February 8, 1876, into a cultured  middle-class family
in Dresden which moved to Bremen in 1888.  Her father,
a government railroad official in early retirement  and failing health
 and concerned about his six children's financial security,  insisted that the
young Paula complete a two-year teachers'  training program before allowing her
to study at the school  for women artists in Berlin.
In September 1898 she settled in the nearby artists' colony of Worpswede
 to work with its celebrated figure painter, Fritz Mackensen.
The Worpswede peasant women, often with their infants,  and the old women and children
 from the poor house became her favorite models, and she recorded the picturesque landscape,
the dark moors and stormy moods of the landscapes around her