About the work
A romantic evening with a full moon: the luxuriant silver moon fills the cloudless sky and submerges the landscape in pale, cool light. Animated and lively, with powerful, sketchy brushstrokes, Otto Modersohn paints his young wife Louise Modersohn-Breling in the light of the evening twilight, canopied and framed by dark, blue-green tree forms. Her attractive appearance in her light-violet summer dress expresses the love and appreciation felt by the painter and lends the atmospheric scene a delicate easiness.
Around 1910, Modersohn’s third wife became a frequent motif in his work. The artist painted her repeatedly on extended walks as an enlivening element in the broad pastoral landscape of Fischerhude.
Sommerabend mit Mond is one of the rare portrait format studies of this period and bears witness in the painterly approach with its generous brushwork to the influence of the work of Vincent van Gogh on the artist in these years. However, the personal signature of Otto Modersohn nonetheless remains unmistakable.
Text authored and provided by Rainer Noeres, manager of the Otto Modersohn Museum in Fischerhude,
born 1948. Typesetter apprenticeship in Hamburg from 1965-1968. Study of fine arts at the Hochschule für bildende Künste in Hamburg (HfbK) from 1968-1973. Co-founder and operating partner of the Produzentengalerie Hamburg from 1973-2009. Teaching appointment for painting at the HfbK in 1974.
Married to Antje Modersohn, the daughter of Christian Modersohn, since 1976, three children. Decisively involved in establishing the Otto Modersohn Museum and archive in Fischerhude since 1977. Responsible for the creation of the catalogue raisonné of Otto Modersohn since 1980. Planning and execution of many exhibitions and cooperation projects with museums and art associations in Germany and abroad. Author of foundational publications on the work of Otto Modersohn. Employed since 2010 as head of the museum, as well as as voluntary managing director of the Otto-Modersohn-Gesellschaft e.V. and the Otto Modersohn Foundation, which were founded in 1989. Member of the board of the Otto Modersohn Foundation and of the Otto-Modersohn-Museum-Tecklenburg e.V. in Tecklenburg/Westphalia, founded in 2015. (Visit website)
