“Yellow can paint happiness, but also sorrow. There is fire red, blood red, and rose red. There is silver blue, sky blue, and storm blue. Each colour contains a soul, which cheers me or repels or excites me”
Vibrant in pigments of blue, ochre and yellow, Huldigung (Homage), 1948 is based on a watercolour from Emil Nolde’s series of “Ungemalte Bilder” or “Unpainted Pictures”, a group of small-format works on paper produced by the artist between 1938 and 1945 at his home in Seebüll, Northern Germany. For Nolde, the term “Unpainted Pictures” reflected the status of the works in two ways: they both encapsulated the prohibition of such paintings in Germany under the Nazi regime as well as Nolde’s particular attitude to these works. He intended their creation to be reimagined as “real paintings”, larger works in oil, at a later date.
One of the primary motifs that Nolde was compelled to paint during this period of wartime isolation was human figures and the complex and intimate dialogues between them. “When the chains fell” and “larger paintings again came forth” (the artist in Tilman Osterwold and Thomas Knubben ed., Emil Nolde. Unpainted Pictures, 2000, p. 14), Nolde transferred this motif into oil.
Huldigung (Homage) is a magnificent example of this larger scale format in which Nolde explores reverence through colour, distance and depth. Human character is conveyed through a combination of the ground colour and position. Occupying almost a third of the canvas, the figure in orange dominates this scene, her posture open and receptive to both the gaze of the viewer and the two figures which form her emotional counterpoint. They are set within the deeper, indeterminate zone of blue that structures the background of the painting, their heads bowed and their hands tentatively raised in a role of submission. Although the gazes of the individuals do not meet, the echo of yellow pigment between their faces conveys a silent and reciprocal communication. In this reverberating treatment of opposing jewel-like colours, Nolde creates a positive-negative mise-en-scène of pictorial balance, admiration and emotional complexity.
From the acclaimed series of post-war oil paintings, the present work is brought to the market for the first time from the collection of the family of the artist.