Sophia Becker-Leber was born in Bonn, Germany in 1869. In 1896 at the age of 27 she began her formal training as an artist at the Royal School of Art in Berlin. In 1897 she moved to the drawing and painting school at the Association of Women and Women Artists Berlin (VdKK) and in 1898 she transferred to the KunstAkademie in Düsseldorf.
In 1902, Sophia married the painter Hans-Josef Becker-Leber. After their marriage, the couple ran a painting and drawing school in Bonn and in 1908 she and her husband founded a group of artists known as the “Vereinigte Künstler in Bonn 08”.
In 1908, the couple moved with their family to Berlin where they became central figures in a fashionable set of artists, writers, intellectuals and philosophers. At the same time, their paintings, especially those of Sophia, became ever more popular with Hans-Josef specialising mainly in landscapes while Sophia concentrated on flower paintings which she sold through a shop in the Kurhotel Fürstenhof.
After World War II, the couple moved out of Berlin to Bückeburg, Lower Saxony, where they had lived earlier in their married life and where Sophia continued to paint the masterly and highly collectable flower paintings by which we mainly remember today. The couple had three children, at least one of whom, Helmar Becker-Leber, better known as Helmar Becker-Berke, carried on the family tradition to become a successful artist in his own right.
Sophia died in 1952 while her husband Hans-Josef died 10 years later in 1962.
Heritage Art
January 2020
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