Emil Nolde

Corporate Collection, Mannheim

Private Collection, Mannheim (acquired as a gift from the above)

Private Collection, Mannheim (by descent from the above in 1989)

Acquired from the above as a gift by the present owner

• Early flower watercolor marking Nolde’s use of color as expressive force
• Vibrant composition with luminous pigments and dynamic brushwork, hallmarks of Nolde’s most celebrated style
• Historically significant work tied to Nolde’s personal garden, his artistic identity, and his enduring market appeal despite past censorship

Emil Nolde devoted his entire life to depicting the flowers that bloomed in the gardens he cultivated. When the artist returned to Alsen in 1914 from his famous South Sea expedition, the source of his inspiration for his paintings, which were covered in colorful flowers, he captured Blumengarten mit Lilien und lila Iris. On the small island of Alsen, where the artist settled with his wife Ada for several years, he cultivated his garden from 1903 and painted his first flower painting. These flower paintings hold a special place in the development of his work. With them, Nolde found his way to color, the most important means of expression in his art, after many years of searching and preparation. The flowers gave him the courage to bring the pure, luminous colors freely into the picture. His garden paintings pushed the dissolution of form and the independence of color to the limits of abstraction - a tendency that he now transferred to the medium of watercolor.

Blumengarten mit Lilien und lila Iris is a remarkable testimony to the artist's early watercolors. In the years that followed, he began to focus even more intensively on depictions of flowers in watercolor, which are still closely associated with his name today. The work is characterized by wonderfully vibrant colors spread across the entire paper. The flowers, depicted with dynamic and spontaneous brushstrokes that evoke a rushing breeze, lend the composition a jubilant energy that is expressed in vivid shades of violet, orange and yellow, accentuated by dark contours. By moistening the Japanese paper and using extremely thin colors, Nolde creates seemingly spontaneous color gradients without detaching himself from the motif. Nolde's artificial floral splendor thus arises from a field of tension cultivated in the studio: while the close-up flowers still appear to be concretely definable, the surrounding space varies from the simple light blue sky to the dark blue-green undulating background. Entirely in the tradition of the Romantic view of nature, the floral microcosm is thus embedded in a generally abstract macrocosm and dispenses with narrative elements in favor of emotional intensity. Although Nolde's art was condemned as “degenerate” during the Nazi era, the flower watercolors continued to find secret buyers.