Emil Nolde

Aage Vilstrup, Copenhagen (acquired from the artist in 1939)
Thøger Vilstrup, Mariestad, Sweden (by descent from the above)
Sale: Klipstein & Kornfeld, Bern, 13th June 1975, lot 706
Umeda Art Gallery, Osaka
Private Collection, Japan
Acquired from the above by the present owners

Letter from Aage Vilstrup to Nolde of 21st February 1939 (mentioned)
Harald Isenstein, 'Emil Hansen fra Nolde', in Kunst, vol. 4, no. 4, Copenhagen, 1956, pp. 87-93, illustrated (titled 'Havet') 
Lars Rostrup Bøyesen, 'Emil Nolde', in Gutenberghus Aarskrift, Copenhagen, 1958, pp. 39-51, illustrated in colour
Martin Urban, Emil Nolde, Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil-Paintings 1915-1951, London, 1990, vol. II, no. 1102, illustrated p. 404 

Meer C, painted in 1930, is part of a series of powerful sea paintings which Nolde executed throughout his career. The wave in the foreground, moving towards the viewer, is rendered in creamy, white thick impasto paint, brilliantly capturing the powerful moment of the breaking wave, becoming tangible, almost as if to end in the viewer's space. The intense contrasts between the blue and white tones further enhance the invincible strength of the sea whilst at the same time adding a strong texture. The artist was preoccupied with the task of representing the sea as an elemental force, often shown with scudding storm clouds or else bathed in an eerie half-light suggestive of an approaching storm (figs. 1 & 3).

'Nolde understands the sea like no other painter before him. He sees it not from the beach or from the boat, but as it exists in itself, devoid of any reference to man, eternally in motion, ever changing, living out its life in and for itself: a divine, self-consuming, primal force that, in its untrammelled freedom, has existed unchanged since the very first day of creation…He has painted the sea in all its permutations, but above all in stormy agitation, its heavy swell transformed into white breakers as it retreats upon itself, beneath heavy, threatening clouds, behind which the autumnal evening sky bleeds in tones of red and deepest orange' (Max Sauerlandt, Emil Nolde, Munich, 1921, pp. 49-50).

Having grown up and spent much of his life in the German province of Schleswig-Holstein, Nolde was rarely out of sight or sound of the sea, which occupied an important place both in his imagination and in his work. His first studio erected during the summer months spent on the island of Alsen from 1903 onwards was a wooden hut on the very edge of the beach, so that he could observe the sea closely and at any time of the day in all its moods. Nolde observed: 'Often, I stood at the window looking out at the sea for hours. There was nothing except water and sky. There was complete silence except for the occasional hushed ripple of the waves against the stones on the beach' (translated from German, quoted in Werner Haftmann, Emil Nolde, Cologne, 1978, p. 70).  He himself evidently viewed his relationship with the sea in something approaching mystical terms. Recalling a stormy crossing of the Kattegat during which, standing on the open deck, he leaned far out over the rail of the boat to experience the power and strength of the sea, he notes: 'I stood gripping the rail, gazing and wondering as the waves and the ship tossed me up and down. For years afterwards, that day remained so vividly in my mind that I incorporated it into my sea paintings with their wild, mountainous green waves and only at the topmost edge a sliver of sulphurous sky' (quoted in Emil Nolde (exhibition catalogue), The Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 1996, p. 132).

The present work is devoid of any human form of life, illustrating the overpowering nature of the sea against which man stands in constant struggle. Despite the obvious starting point in perceived reality - the close attention paid, for example, to the effects of light on the surface of the water - Meer C is something more than merely a literal depiction. The artist reflects his desire to provide not just a depiction of nature, but to express his emotional response to it, to create a visual equivalent of a physical experience. Nolde portrays his seascapes with an undisguised symbolic significance, exploiting clouds, sea and sky as metaphors for the awesome power of nature.

In Meer C, Nolde brilliantly depicts a close detail of the seemingly eternal stretches of the sea. Artist and viewer become part of the element whereby the sea engulfs from every possible angle. Werner Haftmann notes: 'The foaming white breaking waves are like parts of an ornament. This ornament interconnects the painting to a whole whilst rhythmically interweaving the composition, creating a sense of sound perspective into the depths of the ocean' (translated from German, W. Haftmann, Emil Nolde, Cologne, 1978, p. 70).