Girl's head in front of a window

Girl's Head in Front of a Window from 1902, at the Kunsthalle Bremen, places a female subject against the light source — a compositional device that both silhouettes the figure and creates a halo of window light around her head. Modersohn-Becker frequently used the window as a compositional element, simultaneously a light source, a frame-within-the-frame, and a boundary between interior and exterior. The Kunsthalle Bremen holds this alongside numerous other works as part of its comprehensive representation of Modersohn-Becker's development across her short career — she died in 1907 at the age of thirty-one.

The contre-jour lighting — figure against the bright window — creates a specific tonal problem that Modersohn-Becker resolves by simplifying the face into a few tonal masses rather than modeling it naturalistically. The window light defines the silhouette of the head with precision.