Quappi en pull rose

Max Beckmann began this portrait of his wife Mathilde, whom everyone called Quappi, in 1932, and finished it in 1934 in a Germany that had changed underneath them. The Nazis had taken power, and Beckmann, dismissed the year before from his teaching post in Frankfurt, would soon see his work branded degenerate and pulled from German museums. As he reworked the canvas he changed the date and, by his own account, softened the confident smile she first wore, matching the mood to the couple's growing unease. She sits in a blue chair in a bright pink V-necked sweater and matching hat she had just bought in Frankfurt, a cigarette in her hand. In 1937 the Beckmanns left Germany for good, the day after Hitler opened a show attacking modern art.