작품 상세

Watercolour on thin Japan paper 34.3/35 x 46.8/47.5 cm, framed under glass. Signed 'Nolde.' lower right. - In good condition, colours still fresh. The pastose green areas upper left partly with small superficial rubbings. With a photo-expertise by Manfred Reuther, Stiftung Ada und Emil Nolde, Seebüll, dated 6 June 2007. The work is registered with the Nolde-Stiftung Seebüll. Provenance Private collection, North Germany Aside from the array of glowing colours characteristic of many of Emil Nolde's watercolours of flowers, the present sheet captivates with a reduced palette - concentrated around green, grey and red tones. With a clarity almost suggestive of calligraphy, the red-violet clusters of flowers stand out in front of a background maintained in light grey; they are framed above and below by luxurious, dark-green foliage. The reserved tones of the leaves and background make the luminous red of the blossoms shine particularly brightly. It is not only the hues of the colours that enter into a fascinating relationship of mutual contrast. The sagging forms of the leaves also stand in vivid contrast to the tender and delicate, composite silhouettes of the clusters of flowers. "The form is not to be separated from the colour and is indissolubly linked to its effect; it is simultaneously there, almost always large and dominant, seen up close, as though seeking to break through the frame, often with a forceful and emphatic gesture, a sort of hieroglyph that the painter draws out of the object, new and different every time - even if the object remains the same. [...] The subject matter is never unimportant; some of the watercolours of flowers are like portraits, they possess individuality" (Martin Urban, Emil Nolde - Blumen und Tiere: Aquarelle und Zeichnungen, Cologne 1980, p. 36). However, as Martin Urban points out in the remainder of this passage, it was never a scientific interest in botany or a desire for exact studies that motivated Nolde. Nor did the names of the plants interest him. Their appearance in nature, the diversity of their colour and form, became his preferred theme, because it permitted him to engage in an unrestricted artistic articulation that bordered on abstraction without ever losing its connection to nature.