Emil Nolde

Emil Nolde was a 20th-century German Danish painter and printmaker, known for being one of the first Expressionist artists and a member of Die Brücke. He was a key figure in the German Expressionist movement and one of modern art’s greatest colourists.

Born in 1867 to devout Protestant parents who were Danish and Frisian peasants, Nolde was expected to join the family farm. However, unsuited to farm life, the artist instead trained as a wood carver in several furniture factories and later studied at the School of Arts and Crafts in Karlsruhe from 1888 to 1889. During that time, Nolde began sketching landscapes and portraits in his spare time. He taught drawing at the Museum of Industrial Arts in St Gall, Switzerland, between 1892 and 1897. In 1896 Nolde created his first oil paintings. Deciding to devote himself to painting, he studied at Friedrich Fehr's private school in Munich from 1898 to 1899 and with Adolf Hölzel in Dachau in 1899. He also spent part of 1899 and 1900 in Paris, where he attended the Académie Julian.

In 1906, while in Berlin, he briefly joined the Die Brücke group, which included his friend Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. Nolde would go on to exhibit with both the Berlin Secession and Wassily Kandinsky’s Der Blaue Reiter group from 1908 to 1910. By 1912, he had achieved some fame and was able to support himself through his art. His works from that period often featured vibrant colours and themes such as flowers and religious scenes.

During World War II, despite being an outspoken supporter of the Nazi regime, Nolde was declared a ‘degenerate’ artist by the Nazis. In 1937, they removed all his works from German museums and art collections, and in 1941 forbade him to paint. Despite this, he continued to make watercolours in secret at his home in Seebüll, where he lived with his wife, Ada Vilstrup. In 1952 he was awarded the Order of Merit by the West German government. Four years later, Emil Nolde died at the age of 88.

Nolde’s work is celebrated for the intensity of his vision and emotion translated onto the canvas. The Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art held a retrospective in 2018, exploring the breadth and depth of his career. In 2020 Christie’s set an artist world auction record of US$7,34,500 for Nolde’s painting Herbstmeer XVI (1911).