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拍品專文
Throughout his life, Emil Nolde had a strong connection to the landscape of his homeland on the borderlands between Germany and Denmark, which profoundly influenced his art. Inspired by what he saw as the unspoiled, primeval character of this sparsely populated environment, Nolde painted hundreds of works focusing on the atmospheric topography of this untamed stretch of land between the North Sea and the Baltic, much of which was at the mercy of the natural dynamics of the tides. Painted in 1909 and held in the same private family collection since 1913, Aus Friesland is imbued with a sense of the wild, tempestuous nature of the landscape Nolde knew so well, the richly worked passages of impasto and dynamic facture conveying the essential energy of the place and the power of the natural forces that shaped it.
For Nolde, the atmospheric terrain of Frisia (also known as Friesland) offered him a wealth of visual stimuli, from its marshes and waterways that flooded at high tide, to its expansive heathlands and deep, waterlogged bogs, and its wide, open skies, filled with fast moving cloud formations and dramatic sunsets. He would often walk for miles through the windswept countryside collecting impressions, traversing this landscape ‘full of experiences and history’ to discover new vistas and motifs (E. Nolde, quoted in A. King, Emil Nolde: Artist of the Elements, London, 2013, p. 16). Although the area was increasingly subject to change and modernisation over the course of his lifetime – with the arrival of the railways, automobiles and developments in communications gradually altering the landscape – Nolde found enough of its character remained intact to provide him with constant inspiration.
Far more than mere literal depictions of his immediate surroundings, though, Nolde sought in his paintings to commune with and give expression to the primal and elemental forces at work within nature. As the artist explained: ‘I had always wanted to paint so that I, the painter, would be the medium through which the colours worked out their own logical development in the same way that nature creates her own work; in the same way that crystals and metal are formed; that moss and algae grow, that a flower must unfold and bloom under the sun’s rays... I feel at times as though I myself can do nothing, but nature in and through me can do a great deal’ (quoted in M. Urban, Emil Nolde, Landscapes, New York, 1970, p. 28).
In Aus Friesland, this is conveyed through the vigorous brushwork that dances across the canvas, layers of thickly applied pigment overlapping and intertwining with one another to create an active surface that pulsates with its own dynamism and life. The intensity of the brushwork is paired with brilliant colour – the clouds, for example, are depicted in strokes of golden yellow, turquoise blue, deep red and bright pink, capturing the iridescent, lustrous effects of the sunlight that catches their forms. These tones are threaded throughout the rest of the scene, from the reflections on the waterway as it cuts through the deep green vegetation, to the profiles of the windmills in the distance and along the horizon line, where the undulating profile of the land meets the sky.
Nolde’s bold choice of colours reveal the indelible impact of Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin on the artist’s painterly development. Although he categorically denied the substantial or lasting influence of other artists, Nolde’s discovery of these Post-Impressionist painters at the beginning of the twentieth century brought about a distinctive shift in his practice. From this moment onwards, he employed colour in a pure and intuitive manner, heightening tones and playing with unexpected contrasts, as he sought to transform nature ‘by infusing it with one’s own mind and spirit’ (quoted in J. Lloyd, Vincent van Gogh and Expressionism, exh. cat., Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, 2006, p. 58).
Aus Friesland was included in Nolde’s solo exhibition at the Westfälischer Kunstverein in Münster in April 1912, and subsequently in a show that travelled from Kiel to Essen in the winter of 1912-1913. The work was purchased directly from Nolde following this second stage of the exhibition, by the Essen-based collector Paul Brandi, with the artist reportedly visiting Brandi’s apartment and hanging the painting on the wall himself. Aus Friesland has remained with his family for over a century, and comes to auction for the first time in its history.
For Nolde, the atmospheric terrain of Frisia (also known as Friesland) offered him a wealth of visual stimuli, from its marshes and waterways that flooded at high tide, to its expansive heathlands and deep, waterlogged bogs, and its wide, open skies, filled with fast moving cloud formations and dramatic sunsets. He would often walk for miles through the windswept countryside collecting impressions, traversing this landscape ‘full of experiences and history’ to discover new vistas and motifs (E. Nolde, quoted in A. King, Emil Nolde: Artist of the Elements, London, 2013, p. 16). Although the area was increasingly subject to change and modernisation over the course of his lifetime – with the arrival of the railways, automobiles and developments in communications gradually altering the landscape – Nolde found enough of its character remained intact to provide him with constant inspiration.
Far more than mere literal depictions of his immediate surroundings, though, Nolde sought in his paintings to commune with and give expression to the primal and elemental forces at work within nature. As the artist explained: ‘I had always wanted to paint so that I, the painter, would be the medium through which the colours worked out their own logical development in the same way that nature creates her own work; in the same way that crystals and metal are formed; that moss and algae grow, that a flower must unfold and bloom under the sun’s rays... I feel at times as though I myself can do nothing, but nature in and through me can do a great deal’ (quoted in M. Urban, Emil Nolde, Landscapes, New York, 1970, p. 28).
In Aus Friesland, this is conveyed through the vigorous brushwork that dances across the canvas, layers of thickly applied pigment overlapping and intertwining with one another to create an active surface that pulsates with its own dynamism and life. The intensity of the brushwork is paired with brilliant colour – the clouds, for example, are depicted in strokes of golden yellow, turquoise blue, deep red and bright pink, capturing the iridescent, lustrous effects of the sunlight that catches their forms. These tones are threaded throughout the rest of the scene, from the reflections on the waterway as it cuts through the deep green vegetation, to the profiles of the windmills in the distance and along the horizon line, where the undulating profile of the land meets the sky.
Nolde’s bold choice of colours reveal the indelible impact of Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin on the artist’s painterly development. Although he categorically denied the substantial or lasting influence of other artists, Nolde’s discovery of these Post-Impressionist painters at the beginning of the twentieth century brought about a distinctive shift in his practice. From this moment onwards, he employed colour in a pure and intuitive manner, heightening tones and playing with unexpected contrasts, as he sought to transform nature ‘by infusing it with one’s own mind and spirit’ (quoted in J. Lloyd, Vincent van Gogh and Expressionism, exh. cat., Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, 2006, p. 58).
Aus Friesland was included in Nolde’s solo exhibition at the Westfälischer Kunstverein in Münster in April 1912, and subsequently in a show that travelled from Kiel to Essen in the winter of 1912-1913. The work was purchased directly from Nolde following this second stage of the exhibition, by the Essen-based collector Paul Brandi, with the artist reportedly visiting Brandi’s apartment and hanging the painting on the wall himself. Aus Friesland has remained with his family for over a century, and comes to auction for the first time in its history.