Birches

Birches from 1904, at the Carnegie Museum of Art, depicts the silver birch trees that were a constant presence in the Worpswede landscape and a recurring motif in the art colony's work. The Worpswede colony was founded in 1889 in part because of the specific quality of the North German landscape — the birch trees, the moors, the flat light — and birch trees had already become associated with the colony's aesthetic identity when Modersohn-Becker began working there. Her treatment of trees was consistent with her approach to figures: simplified, direct, monumental, stripped of picturesque detail. Carnegie Museum's acquisition reflects the American interest in German Expressionist precursors.

The birch trunks are rendered as vertical masses of white and grey, with the black markings of the bark indicated through simplified strokes rather than detailed rendering. The vertical rhythm of multiple trunks creates a near-abstract composition of alternating light and dark.