.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
In a letter dated to late September 1908, Emil Nolde eloquently described the profound inspiration he found in the sumptuous colour and verdant growth of his garden: ‘They are such calm and beautiful hours when one sits or moves about between the fragrant blossoming flowers; I really wish to give my pictures something of this beauty and I myself have this feeling – the first beautiful happiness – in front of these pictures’ (quoted in M. Reuther, ‘“Greetings from our Young Garden” – Emil Nolde’s Gardens and his Flower Paintings,’ in Emil Nolde: Mein Garten voller Blumen/My Garden Full of Flowers, exh. cat., Berlin, 2009, pp. 23-24).
Painted just a few months later in 1909, Blumengarten (Bonde) elegantly fulfils this goal, capturing Nolde’s reverence for the natural world and the striking beauty of the environment around his home on the island of Als. Filled with vibrant pigment and vigorous brushwork, the scene depicts tightly packed passages of flowers and plant-life at the apex of their summer growth, almost covering the pathways as they spill over the borders of their neatly laid beds to fill the space with life and colour.
Nolde’s love of flowers accompanied him throughout his life: wherever he settled, the artist designed and built marvellous gardens to surround his home, planting banks of his favourite species, from poppies to roses, foxgloves to sunflowers. ‘The blossoming colours of the flowers and the purity of these colours; I loved them so very much,’ Nolde explained. ‘I loved the flowers in the context of their destiny: shooting up, blossoming, glowing, pleasing, sloping down, fading, and ending up cast in the pit’ (quoted in ibid., p. 24). In May of 1903, Nolde and his wife Ada moved to the pastoral idyll of Als, located off the coast of Denmark in the Baltic Sea, where they rented a modest fisherman’s cottage at the edge of a forest that boasted a small plot of surrounding land. Finding inspiration in the diligently tended gardens of his neighbours, Nolde soon set to work on planting his own at the rear of the house, cultivating a selection of vibrant perennials.
Over the course of the following three years, the gardens in Als fed Nolde’s creativity, leading to an important group of paintings that showcase the early evolution of his bold, Expressionist style. Gustav Schiefler, one of the first admirers and collectors of Nolde’s work, was among the few people to visit the artist in his rural retreat. He recalled the way the artist would immerse himself in the garden, seating himself in front of his easel in the midst of a brilliant profusion of flowers: ‘stocks and asters, pinks and carnations… as he worked he grew quieter and quieter, but his eyes glowed with pleasure as he applied one colour after another, subjecting the confusion of colour to the logic of form’ (quoted in Festschrift für Emil Nolde anlässlich seines 60. Geburtstages, Dresden, 1927, p. 56).
While several of his paintings of the gardens from this pivotal period feature family members and close friends, in Blumengarten (Bonde) Nolde allows the rich array of flowering plants to become the primary focus of the composition, filling almost the entire canvas in a riotous play of pigment. Small segments of the surrounding cottages are glimpsed through the foliage, the structures almost subsumed within the natural growth, which is rendered in thick, powerful brushstrokes, that crisscross and overlap in sumptuous impastoed layers. In this way, Nolde captures a vivid impression of his own experiences within the garden, the joy he found when surrounded by these vibrant blooms, the towering, full trees, and the dense borders of thick shrubbery, as well as the overwhelming power, strength and essential beauty of nature.
Nolde credited the extraordinary atmosphere of Als with igniting his approach to colour, opening his eyes to a different sense of light and richness of tone. At the same time, his discovery of the work of Vincent van Gogh provided an equally important stimulus, showing him a way of moving beyond the example of the Impressionists, into a new, more personal form of expression. Following Van Gogh’s 1905 retrospective at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, Gustav Schiefler purchased two of the artist’s paintings, Le canal La Roubine du Roi avec blanchisseuse and Jardin fleuri, which Nolde saw at the collector’s home and later mentioned in a letter, writing: ‘The two paintings by Van Gogh are so wonderful, their impression stays with me for so long and in this isolated corner of the world I think back to them’ (letter 6 June 1906, quoted in J. Lloyd, Vincent van Gogh and Expressionism, exh. cat., Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, 2006, p. 56). While both works altered Nolde’s sense of spatial depth and colour, Jardin fleuri proved particularly influential for the artist’s garden scenes through the remainder of the decade, as seen in in the vigorous, energetic depiction of the environment in Blumengarten (Bonde).
Painted just a few months later in 1909, Blumengarten (Bonde) elegantly fulfils this goal, capturing Nolde’s reverence for the natural world and the striking beauty of the environment around his home on the island of Als. Filled with vibrant pigment and vigorous brushwork, the scene depicts tightly packed passages of flowers and plant-life at the apex of their summer growth, almost covering the pathways as they spill over the borders of their neatly laid beds to fill the space with life and colour.
Nolde’s love of flowers accompanied him throughout his life: wherever he settled, the artist designed and built marvellous gardens to surround his home, planting banks of his favourite species, from poppies to roses, foxgloves to sunflowers. ‘The blossoming colours of the flowers and the purity of these colours; I loved them so very much,’ Nolde explained. ‘I loved the flowers in the context of their destiny: shooting up, blossoming, glowing, pleasing, sloping down, fading, and ending up cast in the pit’ (quoted in ibid., p. 24). In May of 1903, Nolde and his wife Ada moved to the pastoral idyll of Als, located off the coast of Denmark in the Baltic Sea, where they rented a modest fisherman’s cottage at the edge of a forest that boasted a small plot of surrounding land. Finding inspiration in the diligently tended gardens of his neighbours, Nolde soon set to work on planting his own at the rear of the house, cultivating a selection of vibrant perennials.
Over the course of the following three years, the gardens in Als fed Nolde’s creativity, leading to an important group of paintings that showcase the early evolution of his bold, Expressionist style. Gustav Schiefler, one of the first admirers and collectors of Nolde’s work, was among the few people to visit the artist in his rural retreat. He recalled the way the artist would immerse himself in the garden, seating himself in front of his easel in the midst of a brilliant profusion of flowers: ‘stocks and asters, pinks and carnations… as he worked he grew quieter and quieter, but his eyes glowed with pleasure as he applied one colour after another, subjecting the confusion of colour to the logic of form’ (quoted in Festschrift für Emil Nolde anlässlich seines 60. Geburtstages, Dresden, 1927, p. 56).
While several of his paintings of the gardens from this pivotal period feature family members and close friends, in Blumengarten (Bonde) Nolde allows the rich array of flowering plants to become the primary focus of the composition, filling almost the entire canvas in a riotous play of pigment. Small segments of the surrounding cottages are glimpsed through the foliage, the structures almost subsumed within the natural growth, which is rendered in thick, powerful brushstrokes, that crisscross and overlap in sumptuous impastoed layers. In this way, Nolde captures a vivid impression of his own experiences within the garden, the joy he found when surrounded by these vibrant blooms, the towering, full trees, and the dense borders of thick shrubbery, as well as the overwhelming power, strength and essential beauty of nature.
Nolde credited the extraordinary atmosphere of Als with igniting his approach to colour, opening his eyes to a different sense of light and richness of tone. At the same time, his discovery of the work of Vincent van Gogh provided an equally important stimulus, showing him a way of moving beyond the example of the Impressionists, into a new, more personal form of expression. Following Van Gogh’s 1905 retrospective at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, Gustav Schiefler purchased two of the artist’s paintings, Le canal La Roubine du Roi avec blanchisseuse and Jardin fleuri, which Nolde saw at the collector’s home and later mentioned in a letter, writing: ‘The two paintings by Van Gogh are so wonderful, their impression stays with me for so long and in this isolated corner of the world I think back to them’ (letter 6 June 1906, quoted in J. Lloyd, Vincent van Gogh and Expressionism, exh. cat., Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, 2006, p. 56). While both works altered Nolde’s sense of spatial depth and colour, Jardin fleuri proved particularly influential for the artist’s garden scenes through the remainder of the decade, as seen in in the vigorous, energetic depiction of the environment in Blumengarten (Bonde).