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Lot Essay
This work is sold with a photo-certificate from Professor Dr Urban and Professor Dr Reuther of the Nolde Stiftung, Seebüll.
In its immediacy and colouristic splendour, Blumen depicts one of the most enduring motifs of Emil Noldes art while illustrating his mastery of watercolour technique. Working with heavy, paint-soak brushes, Nolde exploited the absorbent properties of Japan paper in order to achieve suggestive nuances and majestic transitions of hues which reinforce the expressive nature of these flowers. The technique contributed to the spontaneity of his works: 'I like to avoid all prior contemplation (...) The product emerges through the work of our hands', he wrote (E. Nolde, quoted in Emil Nolde Master of Watercolour, exh. cat., Berlin, 2010, p. 14). Works such as Blumen, however, illustrate the great mastery Nolde held over the medium: in the way he used the white of the paper as a tonal value integral to the work or in the way he has allowed different layers of colours to overlap in order to achieve middle hues.
The family of the present owner acquired Blumen directly from Ada Nolde, the artists wife, in the 1930s. Nolde married the Danish actress Ada Vilstrup in 1902. Throughout their life together, she shared Noldes love for nature, supporting her husbands desire to build a garden at each of their homes. At Seebüll the couples last abode - the garden was given particular emphasis: a tribute to their union, Nolde shaped its patterns into the letters A and E - the initials of his wifes and his own first names. Already in 1928, Nolde was celebrating the gardens swelling abundance of flowers and how their hardly imaginable colours glow (E. Nolde, ibid., pp. 31-32). Amid that thriving garden, Nolde build a reed-thatched house to serve as a studio, where he created many of his most remarkable flower watercolours.
For Nolde, works such as Blumen were not solely aesthetic objects; they also carried a symbolic almost spiritual - meaning. 'The blossoming colours of the flowers and the purity of these colours; I loved them so very much. I loved the flowers in the context of their destiny: shooting up, blossoming, glowing, pleasing, sloping down, fading, and ending up cast in the pit... Our human destiny is not always as consequent or beautiful' (E. Nolde, quoted in Emil Nolde, My Garden Full of Flowers, exh. cat., Berlin 2009, p. 24).
In its immediacy and colouristic splendour, Blumen depicts one of the most enduring motifs of Emil Noldes art while illustrating his mastery of watercolour technique. Working with heavy, paint-soak brushes, Nolde exploited the absorbent properties of Japan paper in order to achieve suggestive nuances and majestic transitions of hues which reinforce the expressive nature of these flowers. The technique contributed to the spontaneity of his works: 'I like to avoid all prior contemplation (...) The product emerges through the work of our hands', he wrote (E. Nolde, quoted in Emil Nolde Master of Watercolour, exh. cat., Berlin, 2010, p. 14). Works such as Blumen, however, illustrate the great mastery Nolde held over the medium: in the way he used the white of the paper as a tonal value integral to the work or in the way he has allowed different layers of colours to overlap in order to achieve middle hues.
The family of the present owner acquired Blumen directly from Ada Nolde, the artists wife, in the 1930s. Nolde married the Danish actress Ada Vilstrup in 1902. Throughout their life together, she shared Noldes love for nature, supporting her husbands desire to build a garden at each of their homes. At Seebüll the couples last abode - the garden was given particular emphasis: a tribute to their union, Nolde shaped its patterns into the letters A and E - the initials of his wifes and his own first names. Already in 1928, Nolde was celebrating the gardens swelling abundance of flowers and how their hardly imaginable colours glow (E. Nolde, ibid., pp. 31-32). Amid that thriving garden, Nolde build a reed-thatched house to serve as a studio, where he created many of his most remarkable flower watercolours.
For Nolde, works such as Blumen were not solely aesthetic objects; they also carried a symbolic almost spiritual - meaning. 'The blossoming colours of the flowers and the purity of these colours; I loved them so very much. I loved the flowers in the context of their destiny: shooting up, blossoming, glowing, pleasing, sloping down, fading, and ending up cast in the pit... Our human destiny is not always as consequent or beautiful' (E. Nolde, quoted in Emil Nolde, My Garden Full of Flowers, exh. cat., Berlin 2009, p. 24).