From 1919 she was based in the village of Worpswede which since 1889 had been designated, by a number of influential artists of the period, as an . Between 1919 and 1929, albeit with several major breaks, she lodged at a succession of farm cottages and other dwellings in and around the village in order to pursue her career as an artist. Art was not always sufficiently lucrative to pay the rent, and she frequently supplemented her income with farm work, especially during the crisis years immediately following the war. Worpswede remained her home base till 1960, the year of her death, although there were a number of extended trips abroad through those years. In 1920 she moved in to live for a couple of years with , then newly divorced, at her little museum complex ("Haus am Schluh"). After a succession of further moves Oppel installed herself in her final Worpswede home, the so-called "Weyerberg Hut" ("Weyerberghütte") in 1954.