Lot 10 D

The abstract quality and free, ecstatic handling of colour in the watercolour seascapes Emil Nolde created in the North Frisian town of St. Peter in 1946 make them singular within his oeuvre. The gifted watercolour painter has captured the atmospheric moods of the sea and the constantly shifting interplay between weather and lighting in his dramatic, nearly non-objective realms of colour, permitting only isolated motifs to remain as allusions to the real world.
His role model was William Turner, whose art Nolde had studied in the Tate Gallery. Both artists pursued an approach based on realising natural impressions entirely freely, in their subjectively perceived quality.
Like a ghostly schema, a sailing ship seems to hover in the midst of the elements. Sea and sky merge together seamlessly, combining into a unity made up of chromatic nuances. The surface of the water is still calm, and the ship glides along peacefully. However, a storm is brewing: the clouds are gathering together into a threatening blackish grey above the scene and we see the last, diffuse reflections of the evening light shining in the dark water. An unleashing of the elements seems imminent. By realising the natural circumstances in the pure, immaterial chromatic effect of the fluid watercolour technique, Nolde has created an impression of charged intensity, the proverbial calm before the storm.