Girl in White

By Sue Hubbard

“A triumph of literary and artistic understanding, a tour de force: Masterly, moving and beautifully written.” —Fay Weldon

A dazzling novel about groundbreaking artist, Paula Modersohn-Becker—a brilliant early expressionist who toiled under the shadow of her lover Rainer Maria Rilke

Girl in White is the extraordinary story of the German expressionist painter Paula Modershohn-Becker (1876-1907), told from the fictionalized perspective of her daughter, Mathilde.

Written with the eye of a painter and the soul of a poet this moving story is a meditation on love, loss, memory and, ultimately, hope.

Paula Modersohn-Becker was a pioneer of modern art in Europe, but denounced as degenerate by the Nazis after her death. Poet and art critic Sue Hubbard draws on the artist’s diaries and paintings to bring to life her singular existence, her battle to achieve independence and recognition and her intense relationship with the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, and her struggle to find a balance between being a painter, wife, and mother.

Not only do we discover Paula’s vibrant personality and rich legacy of Expressionist paintings, but also come to understand something of the corrupted ideologies of the Third Reich in a book that’s perfect for fans of books like Georgia by Dawn Tripp and The Age of Light by Whitney Scharer.

Paperback
320 pages
Pushkin Press, 2023
5 x 7.77 inches
ISBN 9781782279129
Historical Fiction