NOLDE, EMIL
1867 Nolde–1956 Seebüll

Title: Berglandschaft.
Technique: Watercolour on laid paper.
Measurement: 30.5 x 45 cm.
Notation: Signed lower right: Nolde (barely legible). Verso lower left collection stamp of the Nolde Foundation with registered number: a G5.
Frame: Craftsman's frame.


A copy of the certificate issued by the Nolde Foundation in Seebüll on 29 January 2024 is available for this work. The work is registered there under the number Fr.A.3788 and will be included in the catalogue raisonné of watercolours and drawings currently being compiled.



Provenance:
- - Estate of the artist

- Galerie Utermann, Dortmund (acquired from the previous owner)

- Private collection, Cologne (acquired from the previous owner in 2022)


Literature:
- Urban, Martin: Emil Nolde - Landschaften, Cologne 1993, Panel 10



- A vibrantly colored work from the series of mountain landscapes created during his travels in Switzerland

- Nolde’s landscapes are not mere representations; rather, they convey emotion, mood, and atmosphere as a visual experience

- In this piece, Nolde impressively explores the full range of possibilities offered by watercolor



The Mountain Motif in Emil Nolde’s Oeuvre

When thinking of an “Nolde watercolour,” one most likely envisions, almost instinctively, images of Frisian mudflats and marsh landscapes, vast seas beneath towering skies, or radiant floral compositions. Yet Emil Nolde also created a remarkable body of mountain landscapes.

Nolde owed much to the mountains. After completing his training in the applied arts, the young artist—then still known as Emil Hansen—accepted a position in 1892 as a drawing and applied arts teacher in St. Gallen. There, he achieved considerable financial success through the self-published production of humorously illustrated postcards depicting mountains animated with fairy-tale qualities (fig. 1).

The modest fortune he earned in this way enabled the young man, whose education had previously been limited to the applied arts, to pursue further artistic training as a painter in the art centres of Munich and Paris. It formed the basis of his independence as a freelance artist.

In later years, Nolde repeatedly returned to the Alps. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Emil and Ada Nolde regularly spent holidays in Switzerland or Austria—changes of air for the body and changes of landscape for the painter’s eye. In 1948, Nolde undertook a ten-week honeymoon journey through Switzerland with his second wife, Jolanthe.

During his many stays in the Alps, the artist appears not to have painted a single oil painting (Andreas Fluck, Emil Nolde – Reiselust: Unterwegs in Deutschland, Spanien und der Schweiz, Cologne, 2010, pp. 18–19), but instead produced a large number of watercolours.



A Particularly “Rich” Watercolour

The present sheet most likely does not depict a specific topography. Nolde’s landscapes convey emotion, mood, and atmosphere far more than literal observation.

The painter structured the view of the mountain slope through layered bands of colour that run in loose parallel from bottom to top: frayed dark blue, terracotta, another dark blue fading into green, followed by a lighter blue—almost ultramarine—into which a delicate violet merges near the summit. Above it all rises a dramatically animated and richly contrasted sky that, above a hint of pale blue, explores the tonal spectrum from the lightest yellow to deep black.

The landscape gains depth and distance through the vertical dark blue form at the left edge of the sheet: a classical repoussoir motif. This dark edge belongs to the immediate foreground, while the distant horizontal forms continue behind it.

In this work, Emil Nolde fully explored the possibilities of watercolour. Certain areas reveal where he allowed diluted pigment to move freely across damp paper. In the sky, around the summit, and within the terracotta-coloured zone—which might suggest a river or perhaps an eroded ridge—the pigment stains the paper lightly and translucently. Colours feather outward and intentionally flow into one another.

By contrast, in other areas Nolde worked with more heavily pigmented paint on drier paper. Only in this way could he achieve the structural lines articulating the summit and the saturated velvety blue passages that unexpectedly evoke the blue of Yves Klein.

A cool wind seems to blow across this sheet; the day is in retreat.



A Private Travel Memory

This vibrantly fresh, signed watercolour comes from Emil Nolde’s estate. During his lifetime, he never released it into the art market. It remains a preserved moment of memory from one of his many journeys into the Alps.

Even though the work is now roughly one hundred years old, the sheet still conveys Nolde’s timeless modernity and the enduring fascination that sublime mountain landscapes continue to exert upon humankind.

Alexandra Bresges-Jung



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#Emil Nolde #Expressionism #Die Brücke #Germany #Modern Art #Landscape #Works on paper #Watercolour #Modern Art.







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