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| Artist: Emil Nolde | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Title: (LARGE SUNFLOWER AND CLEMATIS) | ||||||||||||||||||||
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Provenance: Estate of the artist Literature: Artist's Handlist, 1930: '1943 Grosse Sonnenblume u. Clematis'Martin Urban, Emil Nolde, Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil-Paintings 1915-1951, London, 1990, vol. II, no. 1244,illustrated p. 508 Notes: Grosse Sonnenblume und Clematis is an outstanding example of Emil Nolde's series of depictions of sunflowers, onwhich the painter embarked in 1926 and which he continued over the following twenty years of his life (fig. 1). In thepresent work Nolde brilliantly captures the flowers' vitality in all their detail. The powerful energy emanating from thepresent work illustrates the artist's awareness of nature around him as both a passionate gardener and a painter. Hewould take as a starting point easily identified localities or close-ups of flowers, rather than embarking on large scalepanoramic views. It was his northern origin that gave Nolde the ability to capture this powerful atmosphere andallowed the artist to find an understanding of those challenging conditions in nature and life. As Peter Vergo pointedout, flowers symbolised for Nolde the eternal cycle of birth, life and death (P. Vergo, 'Flowers and Gardens', in EmilNolde (exhibition catalogue), Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 1996, p. 118). The present work appears to be notsimply an observation of nature, but also the artist's reflection on life at the same time.The artist's engagement with this particular subject matter also demonstrates Nolde's interest in the work of Vincentvan Gogh, particularly in one of his most iconic subject matters – the sunflowers (fig. 2). During the 1920s and early1930s Nolde visited several exhibitions of the Dutch artist's work; which included among others, the major van Goghretrospective at the Galerie Paul Cassirer in Berlin in 1928. The fervent dedication to expression and symbolic use ofcolour exhibited in van Gogh's works matched Nolde's own deeply held ideology. The artist wrote: 'I loved the music ofcolours [...]. Yellow can depict happiness and also pain. Red can mean fire, blood or roses; blue can mean silver, thesky or a storm, each colour has a soul of its own' (quoted in Martin Urban, Emil Nolde Landscapes, New York, 1969,p. 16). The culmination of these theories can be found in his flower paintings such as the present work: 'The glowingcolours of the flowers and the purity of the colours - I loved it all. I loved the flowers in their destiny: shooting up,blossoming, bending, fading, thrown into a ditch. A human destiny is not always so fine' (Emil Nolde, Jahre derKämpfe, Cologne, 1967, p. 100). As a keen observer of his surroundings and deeply immersed in nature, Nolde wasone of the few painters of his time to translate flowers into a powerful painterly expression in such a persuasive andcompelling way.FIG. 1, Emil Nolde, Grosse Sonnenblumen (I), 1928, oil on panel, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New YorkFIG. 2, Vincent van Gogh, Still Life: Vase with twelve sunflowers, 1888, oil on canvas, BayerischeStaatsgemäldesammlungen, Alte Pinakothek, Munich |
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