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Emil Nolde is widely regarded as one of the twentieth century's finest watercolourists. Alongside his paintings in oil, Nolde executed an extraordinary body of compelling watercolours that display a remarkable mastery of the medium and show him at his most experimental and innovative. Through strokes of liquescent paint he captured a wide variety of subjects ranging from the vast and sodden landscapes of his homeland on the German-Danish border to the abundant flowers of his lovingly cultivated gardens, and from mystical figures of fantasy to motifs drawn from the world of modern life and those recorded during his travels. Nolde's deft handling of watercolours was developed and honed over many years of experimentation. He first explored the medium in the mid-1890s. It was over a decade later, however, before watercolour painting became, as he described it, an 'inner need' - a need that was to endure until his death in 1956 (E. Nolde, quoted in Emil Nolde: Watercolors and Graphics, exh. cat. New York & Leipzig, 1995, p. 18). Nolde created the majority of his watercolours from the 1920s onwards although due to a degree of stylistic and thematic consistency, scholars have found it difficult to date some of them with precision. Watercolour proved a particularly significant medium during the years 1937 to 1945 when the Nationalist Socialist party branded him a 'degenerate' artist and prohibited him from painting or selling his work. Fearing that the odour of oil paint would betray him, Nolde executed over 1,300 small-scale watercolours in secret that he called his 'Unpainted Pictures'. Guided by the intrinsic properties of this fluid medium, Nolde aimed to convey a sense of nature's dynamic, allowing imagery to emerge organically as the brush came into contact with the paper and colour to materialise into form. From 1910, Nolde favoured highly absorbent Japan paper, which he would often moisten before saturating with layers of diluted paint. In his wet-on-wet technique, diaphanous strokes of translucent pigment freely stained and permeated the paper, creating shifting depths of intensely luminous colour. Applying different degrees of pressure with the brush, he would reinforce certain contours, sometimes outlining the forms with thin decorative black lines. Nolde's second wife recorded this process in which chance effects were controlled by his skilled knowledge of the medium: 'patiently the brush caresses the surface, the wet paper cockles, the colour gradually accumulating in the little hollows...Because he painted with such diluted colours, the contours would stray across the surface of the paper for up to an hour...the paper would soak up the colour, the contours would spread as if the material had become liberated...The pictures just happened, unfolded like living beings - under guidance, but with a life of their own' (J. Nolde, quoted in P. Vergo & F. Lunn, Emil Nolde, exh. cat., London, 1996, p. 161). PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE GERMAN COLLECTION

Emil Nolde (1867-1956)

Rote Mohnblüten

Details

Emil Nolde (1867-1956)
Rote Mohnblüten
signed 'Nolde.' (lower right)
watercolour on Japan paper
6 7/8 x 5 5/8 in. (17.6 x 14.3 cm.)
Executed circa 1950

Provenance

Anonymous sale, Van Ham Kunstauktionen, Cologne, 31 May 2006, lot 459.
Galerie Ludorff, Düsseldorf.
Acquired from the above by the present owner.

Special Notice

Artist's Resale Right ("Droit de Suite"). Artist's Resale Right Regulations 2006 apply to this lot, the buyer agrees to pay us an amount equal to the resale royalty provided for in those Regulations, and we undertake to the buyer to pay such amount to the artist's collection agent.

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Lot Essay

Professor Dr Manfred Reuther of the Nolde Stiftung Seebüll has confirmed the authenticity of this work.

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