Emil Nolde

Emil Nolde Red poppy Around 1935/1940 Watercolor on fine Japanese handmade paper. 35,6 x 47,2 cm. Framed under glass. Signed 'Nolde' in black lower right. - Color fresh preserved. With a photo-expertise by Manfred Reuther, Klockries, dated February 12, 2023. The work is registered and documented in his archive under the number "Nolde A - 264/2023". Provenance Private collection Bavaria When Emil Nolde moved into the recently acquired farmhouse Utenwarf in 1916, this triggered a large number of landscape paintings in his oeuvre. Since that time, however, he also created numerous watercolors of flowers, which had their origins in the garden he had planted himself. With great attention to detail, Emil and Ada Nolde had planted the garden with corn poppies, sunflowers, dahlias, irises, calla and lilies. In the course of a year, there were always flowers that were in full bloom and found their way into his watercolors. Unlike Karl Schmidt-Rottluff or Gabriele Münter, who usually painted their flowers in a vase, Nolde seems to have captured them directly in his garden. As is also true for the watercolor "Red Poppy", he painted them in strong close-up and as he found them in the flowerbed - perhaps sitting on a stool. Here Nolde was not interested in the passing of a blossom and the associated theme of transience, but basically chose flowers in full bloom. With the color-soaked watercolor brush, he traced the individual bright red petals, hinting at the dark depth of the calyxes and consciously accepting that blurring would occur. Rather, he used the thin consistency of the watercolors to also suggest the transparency of some of the petals. As Nils Ohlsen writes, in discovering his garden Nolde was once again close to his Norwegian colleague Edvard Munch, who moved into a nursery near Oslo in 1916 (cf. Ausst. Kat. Nolde Stiftung Seebüll 2018, p. 29).