Emil Nolde

Estate of the artist

Artist's Handlist, 1930: '1943 Grosse Sonnenblume u. Clematis'
Martin Urban, Emil Nolde, Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil-Paintings 1915-1951, London, 1990, vol. II, no. 1244, illustrated p. 508

The canvas is unlined. There are two very minor specks of retouching to the upper left quadrant and a few small spots of retouching to the framing edges visible under ultra-violet light. Apart from two small paint losses to the extreme centre-right framing edge, this work is in very good condition. Colours: Overall fairly accurate in the printed catalogue illustration, although the yellows are more vibrant and the greens are fresher in the original.
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Grosse Sonnenblume und Clematis is an outstanding example of Emil Nolde's series of depictions of sunflowers, on which the painter embarked in 1926 and which he continued over the following twenty years of his life (fig. 1). In the present work Nolde brilliantly captures the flowers' vitality in all their detail. The powerful energy emanating from the present work illustrates the artist's awareness of nature around him as both a passionate gardener and a painter. He would take as a starting point easily identified localities or close-ups of flowers, rather than embarking on large scale panoramic views. It was his northern origin that gave Nolde the ability to capture this powerful atmosphere and allowed the artist to find an understanding of those challenging conditions in nature and life. As Peter Vergo pointed out, flowers symbolised for Nolde the eternal cycle of birth, life and death (P. Vergo, 'Flowers and Gardens', in Emil Nolde (exhibition catalogue), Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 1996, p. 118). The present work appears to be not simply an observation of nature, but also the artist's reflection on life at the same time.

The artist's engagement with this particular subject matter also demonstrates Nolde's interest in the work of Vincent van Gogh, particularly in one of his most iconic subject matters – the sunflowers (fig. 2). During the 1920s and early 1930s Nolde visited several exhibitions of the Dutch artist's work; which included among others, the major van Gogh retrospective at the Galerie Paul Cassirer in Berlin in 1928. The fervent dedication to expression and symbolic use of colour exhibited in van Gogh's works matched Nolde's own deeply held ideology. The artist wrote: 'I loved the music of colours [...]. Yellow can depict happiness and also pain. Red can mean fire, blood or roses; blue can mean silver, the sky or a storm, each colour has a soul of its own' (quoted in Martin Urban, Emil Nolde Landscapes, New York, 1969, p. 16). The culmination of these theories can be found in his flower paintings such as the present work: 'The glowing colours of the flowers and the purity of the colours - I loved it all. I loved the flowers in their destiny: shooting up, blossoming, bending, fading, thrown into a ditch. A human destiny is not always so fine' (Emil Nolde, Jahre der Kämpfe, Cologne, 1967, p. 100). As a keen observer of his surroundings and deeply immersed in nature, Nolde was one of the few painters of his time to translate flowers into a powerful painterly expression in such a persuasive and compelling way.

FIG. 1, Emil Nolde, Grosse Sonnenblumen (I), 1928, oil on panel, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

FIG. 2, Vincent van Gogh, Still Life: Vase with twelve sunflowers, 1888, oil on canvas, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Alte Pinakothek, Munich