Marsh landscape

Details

With a confirmation of authenticity by Professor Dr. Manfred Reuther, Nolde Stiftung, Seebüll, dated 14.4.2014. Provenance: private collection North Rhine-Westphalia.

Description

• Depicting a landscape from the surroundings of Utenwarf, not far from Tondern on the west coast of Schleswig, where Nolde grew up
• Nolde refers back to the tradition of Romantic landscape painting in his watercolours
• The artist depicts the marsh landscape in bright, dramatic colours In his depictions of the vast landscapes of the North Schleswig lowlands, Nolde confronts the viewer with the infinite expanse of sky and earth, thus drawing on the tradition of Romantic landscape painting. He prefers either low horizon lines, in which the sky stretches endlessly over the fields, or, as in this watercolour, high horizons, beneath which the water and the marsh stretch out far and wide. The transition into a purely abstract arrangement of colour is only prevented here by the addition of a few buildings that appear in the distance. There are generally no people in these landscapes. Here the artist draws on the Romantic idea of unbridled nature and the insignificance of human beings. In his autobiography, the artist himself speaks of his “romantically fantastic free work”. In 1916, Nolde moved into a small farmhouse, called Utenwarf, near Tondern on the River Wiedau on the west coast of Schleswig. This watercolour shows the view from Utenwarf to Aventoft, a community surrounded by water. Nolde depicts the landscape in dramatic colours: the evening sky glows bluish-purple, the green marsh is cut through by the yellow and blue of the streams. But Nolde was not only interested in the colours of this landscape. An etching entitled “Überschwemmung” (Flooding) from the same year shows the motif in black and white (see Schiefler/Mosel 223). Nolde was thus equally fascinated by the play of curves and lines of the water and the clouds. In 1926, Nolde gave up the farm, as the marsh landscape that inspired him so much was slowly being destroyed by the progressive drainage and development of the land around Utenwarf.