'A gentle woman is the mighty intermediary between God and us artists.'
Auguste Rodin

Women artists overcame numerous institutional barriers in the 19th century to achieve unprecedented success. Yet the personas adopted to express artistic struggle remained almost exclusively male: from the bohemian, dandy and flâneur, to the martyr and Christ-figure.

One reason for this was the prevailing association of genius with men. In many works of art from the period, artistic creativity is connected with male virility, and woman is cast in a variety of supporting roles: as the inspiring muse or as the femme fatale who destroys the male artist.

Paula Modersohn-Becker's self portrait challenges this pervasive myth. It is inscribed: 'I painted this aged 30 on my sixth wedding anniversary', and her swelling belly suggests that she is celebrating her marriage and her pregnancy, but in fact she was not expecting a child and had recently left her husband to pursue her artistic career in Paris. The painting is a proclamation of her artistic independence, and her assumed pregnancy is an explicitly female symbol of her artistic fertility.

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