1457 - Emil Nolde (1867, Nolde – 1956, Seebüll)

Emil Nolde (1867, Nolde – 1956, Seebüll) Junk Ships in China This piece is one of the charming, artistically significant watercolors created during Nolde’s 1913–1914 South Seas voyage to Palau; he painted this one during a stopover in China in the fall of 1913. At the time, the Expressionist artist participated as a guest draftsman in the “German-New Guinea Medical-Demographic Expedition” organized by the Imperial Colonial Office; the expedition’s route took them through the Russian Empire via the Trans-Siberian Railway, through Korea and Japan, and on to China. Nolde enjoyed complete artistic freedom during the journey. In November 1913, Nolde traveled down the Han River and the Yangtze River from Hankau (now a district of Wuhan) to Shanghai. Nolde writes about this in his autobiography *Welt und Heimat* (World and Homeland), published in 1965 (p. 47): “(...) a wonderful journey—encountering or sailing past countless junks. Junk boats with tall, magnificent sails—white or colored. All of this was my delight, my element—this life and bustle on the water with the long reflections of the sails (...)”. For Nolde, an experienced painter, the aim was to capture—both for himself and for others—the distinctive character of the impressions he saw firsthand with quick brushstrokes, taking care not to lose himself in documentary detail. For the junk watercolors he created on the Yangtze River and the China Sea, he sometimes used paper he had acquired just shortly before in Japan. On this sheet, Nolde has placed the Chinese junks—with their yellow sails, abstracted, as it were, into Chinese characters—on ochre-colored water—just as these characters themselves were in part once derived from pictograms (which, as pictorial symbols or signs, directly represent objects or figures). The rhythmic排列 of masts and sails, as well as the interwoven curves in black, ochre, and blue, vividly convey the experience of China in a sensory, visual way. For they reflect both the lively bustle on the water and the contemplative serenity of East Asia—reduced to the essentials and drawing on inner peace. Watercolor and ink brush on drawing paper. Signed “Nolde” in pencil in the upper right corner. 19.7 cm x 26.8 cm. Framed. Included: Photographic appraisal by Prof. Dr. Martin Urban, Ada and Emil Nolde Seebüll Foundation, September 24, 1987; Receipt from the Seebüll Ada and Emil Nolde Foundation, August 14, 1987; invoice from the Koch-Westenhoff Gallery, Lübeck, April 25, 1987. Provenance: Estate of Hildegard Dick, Westerland, Sylt; acquired by Hildegard Dick in 1987 at Galerie Koch-Westenhoff, Lübeck. Watercolor and brush on paper. Signed. Accompanied by an expert opinion by Prof. Dr. Martin Urban, 1987. Acquired in 1987 at the Galerie Koch-Westenhoff in Lübeck; in a private collection in Germany ever since.