Emil Nolde Lot n° 48

Emil Nolde Blue Asters and Sunflower Watercolour on Japanese paper 43 x 30 cm Signed 'Nolde' in pencil in the lower part of the image on the left. - In fresh condition. Margins minimally irregularly trimmed. The watercolour is registered at the Nolde Foundation Seebüll. Provenance Gallery Axel Vömel, Düsseldorf (1967); Private collection Rhineland Emil Nolde's colour fantasies find perhaps their greatest possible freedom in the flower painting. Here the painter can realize his pictorial ideas with a maximum of abstraction, without having to abandon the connection to nature that always remained the foundation of his work. Even though the subject matter of these works has remained the same over the years, the expression is completely different in each case. Sunflower, poppy, iris, coneflower or asters - Nolde's flowers embody less botanical studies than individual beings, characters and moods. The composition of our watercolour is reminiscent of a photographic snapshot in its spontaneous detail and the flowers that have been moved out of the centre. Like a view of the sky, the sunflower, of particular prominence in Nolde's oeuvre, towers steeply above the luminous asters on the right-hand edge of the page and finds its skilfully staged counterweight in the light blue of the left-hand edge. For the representative watercolour Nolde chooses the portrait format, through which he is able to underline the portrait-like moment of this representation once more.