Lot 52 D

In the present watercolour, Emil Nolde's graphic and painterly talents unite to form an intimate portrait of a landscape. Unlike many of his marsh landscapes, this work acquires its individual quality less through the overwhelming pathos of the sky and expansive horizon than through the almost intimate atmosphere of the landscape depicted in tones of yellow and green. The palette of black, yellow and green inevitably stirs associations with the iconic junks and river landscapes that Nolde created during his voyage to Asia.
Here the fluid shapes in watercolour enter into a captivating contrast with the clear line of the ink pen, which the artist has used to insert the farmstead to the left and the pasture to the right of the centre. And it is precisely the complex handling of the medium of ink that reveals Nolde's exceptional understanding of the relationships between the linear and the painterly: “Regardless of how much the atmospheric flow of the ink defines the composition and provides the subjective feeling with depth, line remains an element of the composition: giving form, preserving the objective aspect, persisting against abstraction - like a reconfirmation of what has been seen. The linear-painterly aspect also becomes evident in the stroke” (Astrid Becker, Von der Linie zum Bild. Die Tuschezeichnungen von Emil Nolde, in: Astrid Becker/Christian Ring, Emil Nolde. Glühender Farbenrausch. Aquarelle Tusche- und Kreidezeichnungen, Cologne 2018, p. 151).