Emil Nolde

Emil Nolde Marschlandschaft mit Abendwolken Around 1925/1930 Watercolour on thick handmade paper. 30.5 x 45.5 cm. Framed under glass. Signed 'Nolde' lower right in pencil. - Very good condition. Expert report from Manfred Reuther, Klockries, from 2 February 2022. The work is registered with the number 'Nolde A-230/2022' in his archive. Provenance Hauswedell & Nolte, Auction 239, 12./13.6.1981, lot 1056; private collection, Rhineland In this extraordinarily expressive depiction of a landscape, Emil Nolde reveals his entire artistic ability and his sensibility for natural phenomena made up of light and colour. He has brilliantly transposed the dramatic natural spectacle of an evening, the likes of which it is surely impossible to observe anywhere other than the flat marsh landscape of his German-Danish homeland. A line of low-hanging clouds runs diagonally across the sky that nearly fills the picture; the clouds’ broad, brown contour lines and their play of colours reflecting the setting sun in various shades of pink and yellow strikingly set them off against the shimmering blue background. The silhouettes of a few farmhouses painted in red can be seen along the extremely low horizon line placed at the bottom edge of the picture: their squat, elongated forms stand out as dark shapes against the gleam of the sun’s last rays. The work is remarkable not just for the colouristic quality it achieves with the help of Nolde’s famous watercolour technique, but also for the strong sense of depth produced solely through the layered progression of the cloud formations. The extensive views of marsh landscapes that Nolde created in the late 1920s – initially in the area around Utenwarf and then around Seebüll – capture a great variety of weather phenomena and atmospheric light and are certainly to be counted among the great masterpieces of his oeuvre. They intensely express the artist’s love for the austere and diverse beauty of this remote and expansive landscape.