Who Is Paula Modersohn-Becker? 6 Quotes From The Painter

Google chose to honor Paula Modersohn-Becker with a Google Doodle Thursday for what would have been her 142nd birthday. The German painter, who died at the age of 31 following the birth of her only biological child, was known for her style that showed her inner feelings rather than an accurate portrayal of reality. This style frequently causes her to be associated with the expressionist style of painting.

She started creating at a young age and went through several periods of transformation in her art. She started as a student and eventually moved to an artist's colony when she was 18. While studying at the Worpswede colony she met the man she would later marry.

She later spent time in Paris studying art and was one of the first women to ever depict the naked female form.

Six quotes from artist Paula Modersohn-Becker:

"How happy I would be if I could give figurative expression to the unconscious feeling that often murmurs so softly and sweetly within me," she wrote in her diary.

"The strange quality of expectation that hovers over muted things... I must try to get hold of the great and simple beauty of all that. In general, I must strive for the utmost simplicity united with the most intimate power of observation. That's where greatness lies," she wrote in her journal.

"Lack of money rivets us firmly to the ground, one's wings are clipped," she said on money.

"The Louvre! The Louvre has me in its clutches. Every time I'm there rich blessings rain down upon me. I am coming to understand Titian more and more and learning to love him. And then there is Botticelli's sweet Madonna, with red roses behind her, standing against a blue-green sky. And Fiesole with his poignant little biblical stories, so simply told, often so glorious in their colors," she wrote about the Paris museum.

"I think the time is coming for struggle and uncertainty. It comes into every serious and beautiful life. I knew all along that it had to come," she wrote in her journal.

"Nature is supposed to become greater to me than people. It ought to speak louder from me, I should feel small in the face of nature's enormity. That is the way Mackensen things it should be," she wrote in her journal.