Lot 13 D

Contrasting and highly expressive tones of blue, yellow and green as well as a fluidly light application of the colours transform Emil Nolde’s northern German “Marschlandschaft” into a dramatic visual arrangement. Like no artist before him, he captures his native landscape – with its broad plains, squat farmhouses and endless expanse of sky – through the fireworks of his colours. For Nolde, there was nothing monotonous about the nature here. Its colours and atmosphere change constantly, reflecting the power of natural phenomena.
The present watercolour was probably created in western Schleswig, where Emil and Ada Nolde had purchased the Utenwarf farmhouse. In contrast to his time spent on the idyllic island of Als in the Baltic Sea, Nolde found the more inhospitable landscape and the often rough weather in western Schleswig more artistically interesting: "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.” (cited in: Emil Nolde, Welt und Heimat, Cologne 2002, p. 147). With “Marschlandschaft”, a remarkably well-preserved watercolour by Nolde is coming up for sale. Created around 1930, it is among those works from the best period of his oeuvre which display particularly intense colours.