Lot 83 D

Particularly in his small-format works, Emil Nolde succeeds in captivatingly condensing motifs and expressive chromatic content in an inimitable manner. The present early marsh landscape, which may have been trimmed somewhat along the edges, develops fluidly applied layers of colour in the dark tonality so typical of the period when it was created and outlines them with black brushstrokes. This not only leads to a fine dynamism in the balancing of coloured shape and contour, but also to an emphasis on the complementary composition of the wet watercolours and their qualities, which miraculously lose nothing of their transparency. Shades of violet and yellow, of green and orange, of shifting levels of brightness among the horizontal divisions evoke the light phenomena linked to this landscape and spatial depth. The red that reveals itself in the sky, beginning to shine at the very top, is strikingly mirrored in the red-on-green passage of the grazing cattle. In this little composition probably created at Utenwarf, Nolde makes it look easy as he merges together his everyday observation of nature with his experience of drama and the universality of an event that would repeatedly present a challenge to his artistic intuition and his sense of colour.