Lot 410 D

According to information from the Stiftung Seebüll Ada und Emil Nolde, the watercolour on offer belongs to a series of apostles' heads by Nolde in the fishermen's village Ruttebüll (Rudbøl) in North Schleswig in the summer of 1909. The year 1909 marks a turning point in Nolde's oeuvre. Henceforth, he turned towards a completely new subject area, that of religious motifs. In Ruttebüll, he began his series of “Biblical and Legend Paintings” (Emil Nolde). For the depiction of his characters, Nolde found immediate prototypes in the faces of the local fishermen and farmers marked by wind and weather.
This watercolour was shown at the Emil Nolde exhibition at the Kestner-Gesellschaft, Hanover, in 1948. It is listed among eleven further works on paper as “Zwölf Studien zum Abendmahl” in the exhibition catalogue. Therefore, the present watercolour “Apostelkopf” can be considered as a direct study for Nolde's painting “Abendmahl” (Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen) created in the same year. In this religious masterpiece, the apostles gather closely around Jesus on their last evening together, listening intently, all eyes upon him. The immediacy and intensity of this encounter, accordingly the vision of God's presence, is reflected here in the countenance of the apostle.