Starting in an impressionistic vein, her works increasingly revealed an ever more pronounced formal consolidation in the style of Cézanne. Only after World War I did the young artist, who would soon emerge as the leading light in Hamburg's art scene, reach a mature style marked by expressionist elements. In 1919, she and her husband were among the founding members of the Hamburg Secession. However, since Dorothea Maetzel-Johannsen abandoned her concept of color and form, which had been decisively influenced by the “Brücke” artists, in favor of a softer style around the mid-1920s, very few paintings from this critical creative phase, who died an early death, have survived. The portrait “Das kranke Mädchen” [The Sick Girl] is one of these rare paintings of such outstanding quality and finesse that can primarily be found in Maetzel-Johannsen's early portraits. The mask-like, exaggerated facial features with the disproportionately large black eyes, the eccentric position of the hand and the extremely elongated fingers, as well as the almost crystalline appearance of the pillow, create an impressively enraptured scene, an atmosphere of empathy, as is characteristic of the finest works by the North German artist. [EH]