Paula Modersohn-Becker, Reclining Mother and Child, 1906

• Mother and child face each other, completely oblivious to us, the viewer.
• This is not a traditional reclining nude, staged to titillate the male gaze. This is a woman’s sensuality and animal-like love for her offspring – primal and potent.
• The monumental life-size figure curls around her child, offering warmth. There is a sense of protection here, in the drawn-up legs of the mother. There is tenderness in the gentle cradling of the head.
• There is nothing here to signify time or place. The mother and child are unclothed, there is no backdrop, no hairstyle to tell us who or what they are – the world is shrunk to their circle of intimacy. They could be ancients in a cave, she could be the new mother next door.
• The hazy blue background could signify Becker's yearning for her own child, the calming hues also contrasts the chaos and pain of birth and motherhood and provides Becker's own views on having children.
• The use of the pallid white bedsheets in the foreground convey innocence, purity and tenderness of the moment captured.
• The slight black/greyish outline around the figures creates the illusion of shadow and emphasises their prominence and centrality within the painting.
• Simplified forms, unidealized depiction of the feminine nude.
• Skin depicted as healthy, smooth, and unwrinkled.