Emil Nolde

Private Collection Ellen Sangermano, United States

Donated by the above to the present owner

Emil Nolde, Welt und Heimat die Südseereise 1913 - 1918, Cologne 2002

Ingrid Brügger, Prinz von Johann Georg Hohenzollern & Manfred Reuther, Emil Nolde und die Südsee, Munich 2001



Concerned with capturing nature’s dynamism, Emil Nolde was one of the great watercolourists of the twentieth century.

The present work is exemplary of Nolde’s masterful ability to harnesses the intrinsic fluidity and atmospheric quality of watercolour as a medium. He had consolidated and perfected his proficiency as a watercolourist as early as 1908, spending the rest of his artistic career harnessing the medium to express his inner self.

In recent years, literature on Nolde has frequently pointed to the seascapes of nineteenth-century northern European Romanticism as a source of inspiration for the artist, and particularly works of Caspar David Friedrich. Just as Friedrich proclaimed man’s helplessness against the forces of nature and being lost to the elements, in the present work Nolde who lived by the North Sea, acknowledges the limitations of humanity by adding a boat, rendered in simplified form, surrendering to a riot of colour among the sky and sea.

The result is a powerful composition that beautifully exemplifies Nolde’s use of colour and the watercolour medium as an expressive force.