Emil Nolde

Collection Osthoff, Bielefeld (acquired directly from the artist)
Serge Sabarsky Gallery, Inc., New York
Professor Hilda von Mises, Cambridge, Massachusetts (acquired from the above by 1971)
Acquired in 1973

Staedtisches Museum, Bielefeld

In very good condition. This work boasts very vibrant watercolor, which saturates the sheet and bleeds through to the verso of the handmade Japan sheet. Hinged to mount at top two corners with Japan hinges. Scattered spots of foxing are found in the lower left quadrant of the image, otherwise fine. Bright and fresh.
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The present work epitomizes Nolde's use of flowers as a vehicle for expressing the emotional power of color.  Nolde revered nature not only as a source of inspiration, but also as the antithesis of the industrialized world he increasingly scorned.  As Manfred Reuther noted, "Wherever Nolde lived, he tried to reshape his surroundings and to create flower gardens...He longed for a life in harmony with nature, to which he had felt so close and unbroken an affinity since early childhood" (M. Reuther, "Nolde and Seebüll," in Emil Nolde (exhibition catalogue), The Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 1995, p. 69).

Nolde captured his Flowers at the height of their bloom, lush and redolent.  A vibrant palette of contrasting tones, resonating in combination, fully saturates each fiber of the paper with pigment.  Arranged against a delicate wash of gray negative space, the composition is reminiscent of Japanese flower paintings (see fig. 2).  Nolde was likely inspired by Japanese art from his trip with the German Imperial Colonial Office on their 1913 expedition throughout Asia and the South Seas, as is also evidenced here by his use of vellum-like Japanese paper.  Like Claude Monet, Nolde never tired of depicting the gardens around him.  Of his relationship with flowers, he once stated, "I felt as if they loved my hands."  Through his dynamic and spontaneous brushstrokes, Nolde reciprocates his admiration, creating a surface texture that appears to suggest the lively, shimmering effect of flowers bathed in soft sunlight.

Fig. 1 The artist in his garden in Seebüll

Fig. 2 Japanese, Rimpa School (attrib. to Ogata Korin [1658-1716]). Poppies, panel or part of a screen, early eighteenth century. Photo: Japon artistique I, II (1889), pl. ACF, color ill