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Lot Essay
Nolde's love of nature is well documented. Flowers and gardens are among the most frequently occuring subjects in his oeuvre. Executed in 1917 Wasserosen ("Waterlilies") belongs to the period when Nolde was living in Utenwarf. It was here that he created an elaborate garden that drew peasants from miles around to see the exotic flowers and plants Nolde had grown. The waterlilies in this painting almost certainly belonged to Nolde's garden at Utenwarf.
Although Nolde loved flowers and often painted them for their own sake, they were also for him a poignant symbol of the eternal cycle of life and death. In his autobiography he compared the life cycle of a flower to a work of art, "sprouting, blossoming, gleaming, glowing, bringing joy, drooping, wilting, ending up on the rubbish tip." Wasserosen is a particularly expressive work that with its dark and almost sombre colouring emphasises the seemingly miraculous brilliance of the white lilies as they appear like stars on the surface of the pond. This effect is heightened by the remarkable carved black frame that surrounds the painting.
Prior to his career as a painter, Nolde had been a designer and a carver of ornament in the Northern German city of Flensburg. Wasserosen is a rare example of a painting still "housed" in the original frame that the artist designed and carved for it. The romantic aspect of medieval craftsmanship was vital to the Brücke group - with the woodcut being central to their aesthetics and body of thought. For Nolde, the black frame was also an important part of his aesthetic. "I put very serious black frames around almost all of my pictures," he commented, "They could take that. They were the greatest contrast to the traditional, playful French-Roccoco-style plaster frames that one could possibly imagine. The public didn't like my way of doing things, they wanted to see gold." (Emil Nolde, quoted in exhib.cat, Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum, In Perfect Harmony, Picture and Frame. 1850-1920, March-June 1995, p.224.)
Although Nolde loved flowers and often painted them for their own sake, they were also for him a poignant symbol of the eternal cycle of life and death. In his autobiography he compared the life cycle of a flower to a work of art, "sprouting, blossoming, gleaming, glowing, bringing joy, drooping, wilting, ending up on the rubbish tip." Wasserosen is a particularly expressive work that with its dark and almost sombre colouring emphasises the seemingly miraculous brilliance of the white lilies as they appear like stars on the surface of the pond. This effect is heightened by the remarkable carved black frame that surrounds the painting.
Prior to his career as a painter, Nolde had been a designer and a carver of ornament in the Northern German city of Flensburg. Wasserosen is a rare example of a painting still "housed" in the original frame that the artist designed and carved for it. The romantic aspect of medieval craftsmanship was vital to the Brücke group - with the woodcut being central to their aesthetics and body of thought. For Nolde, the black frame was also an important part of his aesthetic. "I put very serious black frames around almost all of my pictures," he commented, "They could take that. They were the greatest contrast to the traditional, playful French-Roccoco-style plaster frames that one could possibly imagine. The public didn't like my way of doing things, they wanted to see gold." (Emil Nolde, quoted in exhib.cat, Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum, In Perfect Harmony, Picture and Frame. 1850-1920, March-June 1995, p.224.)