Marsh channel with peat barges

Paula Modersohn-Becker executed this Expressionist landscape around 1900, depicting peat barges along a marsh channel near the artists' colony of Worpswede. The flat North German landscape stretches under a wide sky, with working boats adding human presence to the boggy terrain.

Modersohn-Becker discovered Worpswede in 1893 when artists from the colony exhibited in Bremen. She moved there, eventually marrying fellow painter Otto Modersohn. The marshy landscape provided endless subjects. Peat harvesting was essential local industry, and these flat-bottomed barges transported the fuel across waterways. The tempera on board measures 51 x 36 cm and belongs to a private collection. Modersohn-Becker died at just 31, but created over 700 paintings that anticipated Expressionism.