Emil Nolde

Exhibited by Galerie Henze & Ketterer

Material Oil on canvas

Dimensions 37 x 32 cm

Status Vetted

About the Work

This small but spectacularly intense painting from 1915 comes from the large and famous early Expressionist Collection Rauert based in Hamburg, which was advised by Gustav Schiefler, the great print collector, connoisseur and publicist. Martha and Paul Rauert were friends of Nolde and his most dedicated collectors since 1907. The painting was shown in the 1999-2000 touring exhibition of the Rauert Collection, with a color plate in the accompanying catalog.

Emil Nolde had returned with his wife Ada to his Baltic Sea island of Alsen in the fall of 1914 after a trip to the South Seas, where he stayed for a full. With 88 paintings, it was the most productive year of his life, including numerous still lifes. Here is the pure “flower piece”. Seen from close up, the simple vase grows to a certain size and presses the dense bouquet of purple irises against the upper edge of the picture on a red tablecloth in front of a blue wall. The vase and flowers stand to the left of the center. Their shadow to the right, falling on the red tablecloth and the blue wall, fills the right half of the picture as a dark negative form. This gives the composition its tense, almost precarious balance.

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Provenance

Martha and Paul Rauert Collection Hamburg (1920); Private Collection Hamburg (1958).

Literature

1921, Emil Nolde - Gemälde, Aquarelle, Hamburg, Galerie Commeter, March-April; 1997, Expresionismo Aleman, Malaga, Salon de las Cloumnas, Palacio de la Aduana, ill.p. 35, also cover picture; 1999-2001, Nolde, Schmidt-Rottluff und ihre Freunde. Die Sammlung Martha und Paul Rauert, Hamburg 1905 - 1958, Hamburg, Ernst Barlach Haus, Stiftung Hermann F. Reemtsma - Freiburg i.Br., Museum für Neue Kunst - Davos, Kirchner Museum - Berlin, Brücke-Museum a.o., cat. 122, ill.p. 147; 2005, 100 Jahre Künstlergruppe BRÜCKE. Sammlung Martha und Paul Rauert - Die Künstler der Brücke in Jena, Jena, Stadtmuseum Jena, cat. 81, ill. p. 85.