Lot 64 D

In 1916 Emil and Ada Nolde moved from the idyllic island of Als to the town of Tondern (now Tønder) in western Schleswig, where they had purchased the Utenwarf farmhouse a few years before. It would become apparent that the more rugged landscape and the rougher weather were far more interesting for Nolde artistically: “I was yearning for lofty and free air, for an austere and strong beauty, like that which the western coast, with its broad expanse of sky and the clouds above the marshes and water, provides with particular extravagance in the harsh seasons” (Emil Nolde, Welt und Heimat. Die Südseereise. 1913 – 1918, written 1936, ed. Cologne 2002, p. 147). The flat surrounding landscape with its rivers, dunes and squat farmhouses led to a great number of paintings and watercolours featuring landscape motifs during the years that followed.
The present watercolour “Wolken über den Marsch” was probably created in western Schleswig. A simple wooden bridge spanning an arm of the river stands in the centre of the picture. Fields and meadows lie to its right and left. However, the sheet’s appeal derives less from its motif than from the unconventional colour scheme establishing a harmony by combining an intense green with varying shades of violet. Nolde has chosen to show yellow shining through the sky’s fleeting clouds. In his landscape watercolours, he often uses black contours to accentuate his motifs. As in the case of “Wolken über der Marsch”, these provide stability to his flowing colours and draw our gaze into the distance – in the direction of the open sea.