Paula Modersohn-Becker’s Self-Portrait in Front of Paris Buildings (1900) shows a dark face dimly projected against a brilliantly lighted wall. It’s a tiny, prettily colored painting reminiscent of the early Vuillard, except that Vuillard would never have painted so frontal, so hieratic a self-representation. From the picture’s roiled surface a splayed, witchy gaze bears down upon you: those almond-shaped eyes sit so far apart they seem to grip you in a vice. This, you might think, is the stuff that legendary headmistresses are made of, except for a few curious details. The gelid, archaic smile seems at times to lapse into a decidedly schoolgirlish smirk, and from the collar droops an equally school-girlish bow, the sort of bow that goes with a pinafore. This is the sort of person you seem to remember from childhood or a dream. Perhaps she reminds you of the tallest girl in the class—the one you and everybody else looked up to—and the way she’d come over to you making her famous “weird face” and you’d try not to show you were frightened.

This mood of holy silliness—this inability to look in the mirror and paint oneself without hamming it up—is typical of Modersohn-Becker’s self-portraits. A consequence is the dissimilarity of the faces portrayed: the “weird face,” for example, doesn’t look much like the “lady of mystery” face. Some of her charming self-portraits do rather resemble her, but they are so stylistically dissimilar that like a collection of