NOLDE, EMIL
1867 Nolde–1956 Seebüll

Title: Stilles Meer.
Technique: watercolour on Japan.
Measurement: 34 x 47.5 cm.
Notation: Signed lower right: Nolde.
Frame: Craftsman's frame.


A confirmation of authenticity for this work by von Wilhelm Grosshennig, Düsseldorf, dated 14.12.1979 is avaliable as well as a confirmation by the Stiftung Seebüll Ada and Emil Nolde dated 25th March 2025. There it is registered under number Fr.A.659 and will be included in a future catalogue raisonné of watercolours and drawings.



Provenance:
- - Emil Nolde-Stiftung, Seebüll

- Private collection

- Galerie Wilhelm Grosshennig, Düsseldorf

- Private collection Hamburg (since 1979)

- Private collection Austria (by inheritance)

- Private collection North Rhine-Westphalia



- Wonderful play with perspective by dominantly applying the colour blue

- The fusion of sea and sky shows Nolde's proximity to abstraction

- Nolde's depictions of the German sea are the most sought-after motifs of the artist



Born as Emil Hansen in Schleswig-Holstein nearly 160 years ago, a boy entered an established farming family who—initially against resistance and later amid historical upheavals—would go on to achieve worldwide renown as an artist. Trained as a woodcarver for the applied arts and as a furniture draughtsman, the young man obtained a position in 1892 as a drawing and arts-and-crafts teacher in St. Gallen. When a self-published series of hand-colored humorous postcards brought him a small fortune, he invested the proceeds in further training as an independent artist in Munich and Paris. Upon marrying the Dane Ada Vilstrup in 1902, Hansen, like his wife, abandoned his birth name. He thereafter adopted the name “Emil Nolde,” after his native village.



The couple divided their time between the tranquil Baltic island of Alsen and the bustling imperial capital of Berlin, where the artist encountered not only German but also international avant-garde art. Although the North German painter struggled to establish himself within the newly forming artists’ groups, the art scene gradually took notice of him after several difficult years, and connoisseurs soon regarded him as one of Germany’s leading Expressionists. Experiences gained during an expedition to New Guinea in 1913 opened up new thematic fields and had a lasting influence on his artistic production. In 1916, he and his wife moved to the North Sea side of Schleswig, which would become part of Denmark after the war. Emil Nolde adopted his wife’s Danish nationality at that time and retained it throughout his life.



In the 1920s, Emil Nolde became one of Germany’s best-known and most successful painters. Museums organized major exhibitions devoted to his work and acquired his paintings, as did the leading collectors of the Weimar Republic. Nolde became a member of the Prussian Academy of Arts. He was regarded—and regarded himself—as the quintessentially German, Nordic painter whose powerful art shaped the painting of the early twentieth century. The rejection he faced from the National Socialists therefore struck him all the more harshly. The stigma of being labelled “degenerate” in 1937 was followed in 1941 by a professional ban.



Nolde withdrew to his large house in Seebüll. The postwar period rehabilitated the painter and celebrated his expressive, vividly colored paintings and watercolors. He influenced younger postwar artists and exhibited his work several times at the Venice Biennale as well as at the documenta 1 in Kassel in 1955. The importance of Nolde’s position in Germany is further demonstrated by his posthumous inclusion in the documenta exhibitions of 1959 and 1964.



Emil Nolde’s watercolors continue to convey something of the enchantment of the very moment of their creation. The artist was fascinated by the fact that the development of color on wet paper could only be controlled to a limited degree. Once the sheet had dried after the initial phase of work, Nolde would confidently reinterpret and emphasize the roughly conceived pictorial idea with sovereign brushstrokes.



This is also how the present sheet was created. A profusion of blue, violet dispersed across the upper half of the paper, several horizontal accumulations of yellow, and at the lower edge a smear of umber with a touch of turquoise—using these five watery colors, Emil Nolde initially covered almost the entire sheet.



Then came the second act of creation: with dark blue paint, the artist drew contours onto the now-dried paper using a brush. A simple line became the horizon—sky and earth were separated. Undulating shadow lines surround the yellow clouds. Individual, shorter strokes suggest the waves, transforming the strip of umber unmistakably into a shoreline. What is now the surface of the sea is given internal structure through delicate, almost calligraphic lines. The chance-formed edges of color that meet the horizontal white zone, where the paper was intentionally left untouched, become accented as wave crests, while the white itself transforms into the foam of the breaking wave. On the horizon, a small steamship can just barely be discerned, rendered as a dark blue suggestion. Yet within the chromatic harmony of sky and sea, human existence plays only an entirely subordinate role in Emil Nolde’s vision.



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#Emil Nolde #Expressionism #Die Brücke #Germany #Modern Art #Modern Art.







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