Lot 15 | Emil Nolde | Abendhimmel über der Marsch

NOLDE, EMIL
1867 Nolde - 1956 Seebüll

Title: Abendhimmel über der Marsch.
Date: 1930/35.
Technique: Watercolour on Japan.
Measurement: 35 x 48cm.
Notation: Signed lower right: Nolde.
Frame/Pedestal: Framed.

A copy of a photo certificate from Prof. Dr Martin Urban, Emil and Ada Nolde Foundation, Seebüll, dated 11.04.1985, is available for this work.

Provenance:
- Private collection Rhineland (acquired around 1930)
- Private collection Frankfurt
- Hauswedell & Nolte, Hamburg, 259th auction, 06-08 June 1985, lot 1186
- Fisher Fine Art, London (acquired from the previous owner in 1985)
- Private collection, Germany (acquired from the previous owner in 1985)
- Christie's, London, auction 28.11.1989, lot 142
- Private collection Switzerland (acquired from the previous owner in 1989)
- Galerie Neher, Essen (acquired from the previous owner in 1990)
- Private collection North Rhine-Westphalia (acquired from the previous owner in 1990)

Exhibitions:
- Galerie Thomas, Munich 1990
- Westphalian State Museum, Münster 1991/92

Literature:
- Exhib. cat. Galerie Thomas, 25 Jahre danach, Galerie Thomas, Munich 1990, cat. no. 34, ill
- Weltkunst Verlag (ed.): Kunstpreis-Jahrbuch 1985, Deutsche und internationale Auktionsergebnisse, vol. 40.1, Munich 1985, p. 323
- Repro-Holland BV (ed.): World Collectors Annuary, Volume XXXVI, Delft 1985, p. 274
- Weltkunst Verlag (ed.): Art Prize Yearbook 1990, German and International Auction Results, Volume 45.1, Munich 1985, p. 320

- Nolde's mystical experience of nature is particularly well expressed in his luminous marshland landscapes
- Closed provenance
- His virtuoso watercolour painting and skilful use of colour make his works distinctive

Fantastic North

One of the leading representatives of expressionism, Emil Nolde, whose pseudonym refers to his home village of Nolde in North Schleswig, became famous above all for his paintings and watercolours of flowers and landscapes, the expressive quality of which is created by the intense luminosity of the colour.

Nolde developed his art from within, and any attempts to obtain an academic education remained without consequence. Nolde remained an autodidact, always turning to the freedom of his own self-realisation. He worked as a woodcarver's assistant and carver for a time. His travels took him to Munich, Karlsruhe and Berlin, where he worked in furniture factories. In St. Gallen, Switzerland, he studied the mountains and their inhabitants in detail in small studies and watercolours, which were to have a stylistically formative effect on his further work. Although Nolde visited private art institutions in Munich and Paris, his artistic development did not conform to any school. He mainly studied originals independently, detached from the prevailing canon. The idiosyncratic painting of the Belgian James Ensor and the Norwegian Edvard Munch were formative for him. In Berlin, he was influenced by the objects and figures in the Ethnological Museum, while later impressions from trips to the South Seas are also reflected in his work. In particular, however, Nolde was drawn to the fantastical, twilight atmosphere of the north. He initially settled on the Baltic island of Alsen, and later took up residence in Utenwarf and Seebüll. During his numerous stays on the German and Danish coasts, Nolde was always able to draw new views of small fishing villages and seaside resorts. Ghosts and faces revealed themselves to him in the changing marsh landscape, and his work is often populated by grotesque figures. He created images of a living nature, but mystical and religious themes also consistently shaped his content. Nolde set himself apart from German Impressionism, which he saw as a German-French hybrid art, by emphasising his rural background, which allowed him a particularly authentic approach to reality and its unadulterated, true-to-life reproduction. Although he only belonged to the artists' association “Die Brücke” for a short time, Nolde retained the expressionist basic concept of a unity of art and life throughout.

Colouristic Fireworks

The watercolour shown here combines closeness to nature with the unadulterated joy of a riot of colour. The view of a sky, whose colour values and light effects change rapidly at twilight, appears entirely on its own, without reference to landscape, without concrete reference to a place or area. No house, no animal, no human being can be seen; any figuration is banned from the picture surface.

Nolde renders the impression of nature as pure expressive abstraction in dramatic contrasts. The burning red-orange of the sunset is slowly replaced by the cool deep blue of the incoming night and flares up in a last bright glow. The composition captivates as a colouristic firework, as a painterly answer to the celestial event. Nolde's spontaneous artistic reaction to the overwhelming sensory experience of the rapidly vanishing scenario is reflected in the fluidity of the watercolour, with which the fleeting colours are ecstatically put on paper. The motif is almost absorbed by the magic of the colour and dissolves. What remains is the scenic atmospheric image as an ecstatic celebration of light and colour.

Bettina Haiss