Details

With a photo expertise by Professor Dr. Manfred Reuther, Klockries, dated November 2023. Hirschl & Adler, New York; Karen Dean Bunting Trust, Stillwell/ Texas; Galerie Serge Sabarsky, New York, acquired from the aforementioned in 1990;collection of/estate of Serge Sabarsky, New York; collection of/Foundation Vally Sabarsky, New York. Exhibitions: Expressionisten 2: Aquarelle, Zeichnungen, Ölbilder, Galerie Ilse Schweinsteiger, Munich 1982, cat. no.65; Emil Nolde (1867-1956), Serge Sabarsky Gallery, New York 1984, cat. no.6; Emil Nolde: Aquarelle und Graphik, Internationales Kulturzentrum Egon Schiele, Cesky Krumlov et. al. 1994-1998. Provenance: Hirschl & Adler, New York; Karen Dean Bunting Trust, Stillwell, Texas; Serge Sabarsky Gallery, New York, acquired from the aforementioned in 1990; Serge Sabarsky Collection/Asset, New York; Vally Sabarsky Collection/Foundation, New York.

Descrizione

• Quick, sketchy brushstrokes
• The sitter remains anonymous and yet present
• In the renowned Serge Sabarsky Collection since 1990 In the present watercolour, Nolde sketches the head of a boy with a peaked cap in profile with a few quick and confident brushstrokes. This fleeting portrait may have been created during Nolde’s time in Berlin. The artist wrote about his years there: “Every evening at eleven I put on my dark trousers and the black St. Gallen tailcoat (…). My Ada also put on her best dress and we went to masked balls, cabarets and the ice palace. And then we went to public pubs, where impotent asphalt lions and hectic demimondaine ladies sat pale as powder and smelling of corpses in their elegant, daring gowns, as if worn by queens. And then we went on into the cigarette haze of the morning cafés, where newcomers from the provinces, sitting harmlessly with streetwalkers, half asleep in a champagne frenzy. I drew and drew, the light of the halls, the surface tinsel, all the people, whether bad or good, whether demimonde or completely depraved, I drew this flip side of life with its make-up, with its slippery dirt and corruption. There was a lot of eye candy everywhere. The people were not important to me, they came, danced, sat down and left again, what I managed to capture on paper was the only thing that seemed essential to me. At times it was humid in this depths between all these carelessly happy and unhappy people. I drew and drew.” (Emil Nolde, Jahre der Kämpfe. 1902-1914, Cologne 1967, p. 147 f.).