Lot Essay
Nolde first experimented with watercolour 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 created the dense luminous colour so apparent in Feuerlilien und roter Mohn: "...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 watercolour, permitting the pigments to flow into each other, controlling their movement with a tuft of cotton...This new use of watercolour 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, Emil Nolde, New York, 1963, p. 67).
Professor Martin Urban of the Nolde-Stiftung, Seebüll, has kindly confirmed the authenticity of this work.
Shortly afterwards he perfected a method of staining which created the dense luminous colour so apparent in Feuerlilien und roter Mohn: "...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 watercolour, permitting the pigments to flow into each other, controlling their movement with a tuft of cotton...This new use of watercolour 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, Emil Nolde, New York, 1963, p. 67).
Professor Martin Urban of the Nolde-Stiftung, Seebüll, has kindly confirmed the authenticity of this work.