Emil Nolde

Emil Nolde Evening marshland landscape with farmstead (small hut and scrubby pasture, probably near the coast) 1922 Watercolour and pen-and-ink drawing on strong smooth buff paper 23 x 34,2/34,5 cm Framed under glass. Signed 'Nolde.' in brown ink lower right. On the reverse of the frame cardboard with exhibition sticker and handwritten cat. No. '21', a number label '218' and handwritten notes on artist and year of origin as well as owner. - The paper minimally browned. We thank Manfred Reuther, Klockries, for kind information. Provenance Prof. Dr. Ernst August Engelking, Heidelberg, probably acquired in 1931 at the Galerie Alex Vömel, Düsseldorf; private property, Rhineland; Kunsthaus Lempertz, Auction Modern and Contemporary Art 847, Cologne, 26/27 November 2003, lot 882; private property, Rhineland Exhibitions Freiburg im Breisgau 1950 (Kunstverein), Emil Nolde, cat. No. 21 (with exhibition label on the back of the frame) In the present watercolour Emil Nolde's drawing and painting talents combine to create an intimate landscape portrait. Unlike many of his marshlands, the work gains its individual quality less from the overwhelming pathos of sky and far horizon than from the almost intimate mood of the landscape set in shades of yellow and green. The palette of black, yellow and green inevitably evokes associations with Nolde's iconic junks and river landscapes created during his travels in Asia. Here, the flowing planes in watercolor contrast delightfully with the clean lines of ink pen, which the artist uses to create the courtyard to the left and the pasture to the right of center. And it is precisely in the complex handling of the medium of ink that Nolde's special understanding of the relations between the linear and the painterly is revealed to the viewer: "No matter how much the atmospheric course of the ink determines the design and lends depth to the subjective feeling, the line remains a component of the design: giving form, preserving objectivity, asserting itself against abstraction, like a reassurance of what has been seen. Even in the stroke, the linear painterly becomes evident." (Astrid Becker, From Line to Image. Die Tuschezeichnungen von Emil Nolde, in: Astrid Becker/Christian Ring (eds.), Emil Nolde. Glühender Farbenrausch, Cologne 2018, p. 151).