Lot 7 Dα

In 1889 the artists Otto Modersohn and Fritz Mackensen found precisely the unspoilt, distinctive landscape they had been searching for in the village of Worpswede and the surrounding countryside. The extraordinary character of its light and the broad horizon of the Worpswede landscape offered them an inexhaustible source of natural inspiration. They moved there together with Hans am Ende and thus founded one of Germany’s most famous artists’ colonies.
“Unter Birken” encapsulates the characteristic features of this distinctive region. Its flat landscape stretches out behind the foreground, where four birch trunks rise up with their pale bark glowing in the warm evening light. The thatch-roofed, half-timber buildings place the scene in direct proximity to the village; a child depicted from behind is turned towards the animals grazing in the middle ground. The crescent of the moon can already be seen above the little wood at the left edge of the picture, and the evening sky, which is still faintly blue, stands in brisk contrast to the reddish-brown and dark-green tones of the landscape. The evocative, peaceful scene that Otto Modersohn has captured here describes the life of the native residents in harmony with the rhythm of nature.