Lot 251 Dα

Here, for once, Nolde does not reach for the splendour of the flowers in his garden for the motif of this image; instead, he selects the luxuriant abundance of a large bouquet of tulips. The flowers, which are diverse in terms of both colour and form, stand on the sheet in their natural beauty, almost bursting across its edges. They form a festive (perhaps with an Easter atmosphere) and rustic spring bouquet in a simple ceramic vase. However, Nolde has placed a decidedly artistic and cool accent in the exotic effect of the blue tulip flowers that had fascinated him since the 1920s. The watercolours have been applied in saturated tones on top of a fine grey and stand in contrast to two open red blossoms and a mass of white flowers. Nolde has used dynamic and sweeping strokes of the brush to outline their silhouettes in grey on the light ground of the paper, mediating between them and the background of the same colour, as their white also seems to bundle together the light. Nolde's watercolour technique remains natural as well as refined: visually there are fine balances, but everything nonetheless seems to have been spontaneously thrown down on the sheet.
“This is not a case of a progressive development with age simply intensifying step by step - which is what makes it difficult to precisely date individual works - nor of a capacity for an ever more strongly individualised power of painterly composition deriving, for example, from the naturally constantly expanding store of artistic means of expression and technical experience. Something else is meant: the complete unison, the uninterrupted interlocking of motif and form which spiritualises the subject matter in the individual work into a purely artistic form without taking away any of its distinctive quality in doing so and, on the contrary, acknowledging its entire (one is tempted to say: material) substance precisely in this way.” (Max Sauerlandt, Emil Nolde, Munich 1921, cited in: Jahrbuch 1958/59 der Stiftung Seebüll Ada und Emil Nolde, Max Sauerlandt zum Gedächtnis, Flensburg (n.d.), p. 24).