Emil Nolde

Prof. Hans Heinrich Berg, Hamburg

Private Collection, Hamburg (as a gift from the above before 1968)

Thence by descent to the present owner

The present work is an expressive and vibrant depiction of blossoming flowers by the master of watercolour, Emil Nolde. Nolde utilises the medium to its fullest, with overlaying pigment creating gradation in colour and vivid saturated tones, whilst his free and loose brushstrokes capture the velvety texture of the delicate petals.

Flowers were central to Emil Nolde’s œuvre. He painted flowers and gardens throughout his life, with his depictions of flowers in watercolour beginning in circa 1918. In 1927 Nolde moved to northern Germany, building a house in the countryside at Seebüll near the Danish border. It was here that he lived and worked until his death in 1956, devoted entirely to his wife, his work and his garden. Indeed, the garden he designed was charmingly focused around two large floral beds forming the shape of two letters – the letter E, Nolde’s initial, and the letter A, the initial of his wife Ada. Each summer these beds flourished with the exquisitely coloured blooms the artist so adored and so vividly depicted in his work.