Nolde first experimented with watercolor on a trip to the South Seas in 1913 when he made a series of studies of Chinese junks strongly indebted to Oriental art.

Shortly afterwards he perfected a method of staining which permitted him the dense luminous color so apparent in this work:

.... he also used a different technique which he pushed to a
highly advanced point. Employing an absorbent Japan paper, he
moistened it and then applied the watercolor, permitting the
pigments to flow into each other, controlling their movement
with a tuft of cotton. There is no white, only color. This new
use of watercolor was his innovation, necessary to permit him
the free improvisations he desired. Often - almost as in a
Rorschach ink blot - the configuration on the wet page would
suggest a cloud, a mountain, the sea or a flower, from which
the artist would capture and articulate the vision. (P. Selz,
E. Nolde, New York, 1963, p. 67)