Emil Nolde - Am Nachmittag - image-1

Lot 267 Dα

Emil Nolde - Am Nachmittag

Auction 1110 - overview Cologne
01.06.2018, 17:00 - Modern Art
Estimate: 130.000 € - 160.000 €
Result: 148.800 € (incl. premium)

Emil Nolde

Am Nachmittag
Circa 1930/35

Watercolour on Japan paper 32.8 x 44 cm Framed under glass. Signed 'Nolde.' in pen ink and and titled "Am Nachmittag" on Ada Nolde's old mat. - In fine condition.

“Dreams, light-winged in unreal life living. Dreams, vanishing as quickly as they emerge. Dreams, unfettered and often wondrous in the joy of life and beauty, in stirrings sensuous to the eye. People and seas, land and creatures often appear so fantastically beautiful - like nothing I have ever seen in waking life.” (Emil Nolde, Jahre der Kämpfe: 1902-1914, Flensburg 1958, p. 206).
In our watercolour Emil Nolde uses luminous violet, blue and green to paint North Friesia's Gotteskoog area, next to the lake Hülltofter Tief and near Seebüll, the artist's home. The viewer's gaze wanders across another lake, the Ruttebüller See, towards the village of Rosenkranz on the opposite side; Nolde has its houses appear on the horizon “lined up like beads on a rosary” (Emil Nolde, Jahre der Kämpfe: 1902-1914, Flensburg 1958, p. 112). The artist has shifted the horizon line with the little houses into the middle of the picture and composed the luminous spectacle of the clouds in the sky as almost a mirror image of their reflections on the surface of the lake. Here the atmospheric light of the afternoon seems just as fleeting as the apparitions in the dreams described by the artist. In the fantastic harmony of colours Nolde causes earth, water and sky to merge together and a landscape of unreal beauty to emerge.
The outstanding quality of this extraordinary work did not remain unremarked by Ernst Henke, an industrialist and art collector from Essen, who purchased the watercolour from his friend Nolde - probably before 1936.

Certificate

With a photo-certificate from Manfred Reuther, Risum-Lindholm, dated 6 November 2017

Provenance

Ernst Henke Collection, Essen (presumably acquired from the artist around 1936); Private collection, Rhineland/South Germany

Exhibitions

Essen 1966/1967 (Museum Folkwang), Emil Nolde. Aquarelle in Essener Privatbesitz, cat. no. 27.