작품 상세

Watercolour on thick Japan paper 15.5 x 19.5 cm, framed under glass. Signed 'Nolde.' lower right. - On verso firmly mounted to the backing card at the upper corners, and titled "Orchideenzweig" (Panicle of Orchids) by Ada Nolde. - The edges cut slightly unevenly. With a photo-expertise by Manfred Reuther, Stiftung Ada und Emil Nolde, Seebüll, from 26 August 2013 Provenance Private possession, North Rhine-Westphalia; Lempertz Cologne, auction 679, 3 June 1992, lot 345; private collection, North Rhine-Westphalia This unusually small watercolour once again demonstrates Emil Nolde's mastery of the treatment of colour and form. The composition is focussed on a close-up of a blossoming panicle of orchids and unfolds in a glowing triad of red-orange, green and a deep grey-blue. The delicate, knobbly line of the twig is filled with blossoms and stretches across the entire picture plane in a gentle arch. At the right edge of the image it crosses a second arch in the form of the upwardly striving stem of a plant. The orchids are in full blossom and have been laid out partly in opaque colours; the green stem and the background in various shades of blue recede behind them in the form of a transparent veil of colour. The artist has kept the flowing application of watery paint in a slight distance to the blossoming twig; in this way, the paint soaked up by the paper surrounds it with a kind of a light aura. Thus the pulsating, bright red of the blossoms is made to shine all the more strongly. Nolde's passion for colour, for its sensual and spiritual emotional qualities, is well known. "The sensation deriving from tones, whether joy, exultation, sadness, tragedy, dream or other emotional impulse can be given through colours; yes, through the value and timbre of its colours, every picture can awaken movement in the soul of every person who is sensitive to colour." (Emil Nolde, cited in: Martin Urban, Emil Nolde - Blumen und Tiere: Aquarelle und Zeichnungen, Cologne 1980, p. 36). In our small work the vehemence and expressive power that the intensive, very deliberate application of colour tones can develop in even a limited space becomes evident.