Lot 3 | Emil Nolde | Marschlandschaft mit Bauernhof und Abendhimmel

An eventful life
The fourth of five children, young Emil Hansen grew up in a long-established farming family in the village of Nolde in northern Schleswig. He wanted to become an artist, but his father disapproved, so they compromised by sending him to Flensburg to train as a woodcarver and furniture designer. At the same time, he continued his education at the local arts and crafts school. After several years of travelling, the young man found employment in 1892 as a drawing and arts and crafts teacher in St. Gallen. There he enjoyed great financial success with his self-published edition of humorous illustrated postcards. The small fortune he earned from this secured his livelihood as an independent artist for several years.
Emil Hansen continued his education in the centres of art: in Munich, he was rejected by the academy in 1898, but then attended Adolf Hölzel's private painting school. In 1899, he travelled to Paris for nine months, attended courses at the Académie Julian, continued his education in the museums of the old masters and was impressed by the works of Eduard Manet and Edgar Degas. In 1902, on the occasion of his marriage to the Danish Ada Vilstrup, he dropped his birth name and took the name of his hometown, "Emil Nolde".
The couple lived mainly on the Baltic Sea island of Alsen, which at that time belonged to Prussia, but spent most of their winters in Berlin. Here he saw works by Paul Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh, which strengthened his commitment to pure colour painting. Nolde took part in numerous exhibitions, but his financial situation, which had become increasingly difficult over time, was slow to improve. He temporarily became a member of the artists' group "Brücke". After a dispute with Max Liebermann, his brief membership in the Berlin Secession also ended in a break. Emil Nolde followed Georg Tappert into the ‘Neue Sezession’ in 1910. At this time, he became well known in wide circles of the art world and was considered by connoisseurs to be one of the leading German Expressionists. In 1913, the painter and his wife accompanied an expedition to German New Guinea for six months; this trip opened up a new range of subjects for him. Three years later, the couple moved to the North Sea coast of Schleswig, in the German-Danish border region, which was ceded to Denmark after the war. Emil Nolde decided to take his wife's Danish nationality, which he retained for the rest of his life.

During the 1920s, Emil Nolde became one of Germany's best-known and highest-paid artists. On his 60th birthday in 1927, a major retrospective of 433 of his works was held in Dresden, which was subsequently presented in other cities. Nolde's art is purchased by all the leading museums in the German Reich and by many modern-minded collectors. Nolde becomes a member of the Prussian Academy of Arts and is awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Kiel. He is regarded – and regards himself – as the quintessentially German, Nordic painter who shapes the early 20th century with his powerful art. From this height, he falls deeply when the National Socialists' art dictatorship brands his works as "degenerate" in 1937 and imposes a professional ban on him in 1941. Nolde retreats to his house "Seebüll", built in the 1920s, where he paints many small-format watercolours, which he himself calls "unpainted pictures". After the war, Emil Nolde was able to seamlessly continue his great career of the 1920s and early 1930s and also influenced post-war modernism. His works were exhibited in museums nationally and internationally, he received numerous honours and awards, and was represented several times at the Venice Biennale and also at "documenta1" in 1955. Emil Nolde died in Seebüll in 1956.

The marsh landscapes
The marsh landscape stretches out beneath a high, wide sky where colourful clouds pile up. In the land, painted summarily as a green strip, stands a red house with a low-slung roof. The building is shifted to the right side of the picture. Emil Nolde manages to depict the topography with minimal means: the continuous line, running parallel to the horizon and the lower edge of the picture, acts as an access route to the farmstead. Towards the right edge of the picture, where bushes adjoin the house, this line drops away. The house thus stands on the edge of a depression. And above this minimally accentuated expanse stands the fantastic sky. A cluster of clouds in deep dark purple and medium blue floats in front of the bright light blue and golden yellow evening sky. The mood does not seem particularly threatening. The bright strip on the horizon, which also frames the dark clouds, suggests a peaceful atmosphere. The threatening clouds will pass. The sky above the vast landscape of his homeland provided Emil Nolde with the most wonderful models for his watercolours. He was able to constantly observe the ever-changing multicoloured cloud formations from his studio in Seebüll. In this sheet, dated by the Seebüll Foundation to around 1935 and still fresh with colour, it is clear that the motif of the farmyard serves primarily to illustrate the scale of the vastness and size of the marshland – and, in this context, perhaps also the relative insignificance of human existence.