.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
'They are such calm and beautiful hours when one sits or moves about between the fragrant and blossoming flowers; I really wish to give my pictures something of this beauty.'
(Emil Nolde quoted in Emil Nolde: My Garden Full of Flowers, exh. cat., Cologne, 2009, pp. 23-24)
Flowers held an important symbolism for Nolde. They were intrinsically tied to the memories of his childhood home, where he could distinctly recall walking through the gardens with his mother at a young age while she tended to the plants, her delicate hands picking roses and shaving their sharp thorns away from their stems. They were also, to his mind, a vivid example of the eternal cycle of birth, life and death that underpinned nature. Entranced by their beauty, yet aware of their transience and ephemerality, Nolde saw these blooms as the romantic, almost tragic symbol of life itself: 'The blossoming colors of the flowers and the purity of these colors; I loved them so very much. I loved the flowers in the context of their destiny: shooting up, blossoming, glowing, pleasing, sloping down, fading, and ending up cast in the pit. Our human destiny is not always as consequent or beautiful' (quoted in ibid., p. 24).
(Emil Nolde quoted in Emil Nolde: My Garden Full of Flowers, exh. cat., Cologne, 2009, pp. 23-24)
Flowers held an important symbolism for Nolde. They were intrinsically tied to the memories of his childhood home, where he could distinctly recall walking through the gardens with his mother at a young age while she tended to the plants, her delicate hands picking roses and shaving their sharp thorns away from their stems. They were also, to his mind, a vivid example of the eternal cycle of birth, life and death that underpinned nature. Entranced by their beauty, yet aware of their transience and ephemerality, Nolde saw these blooms as the romantic, almost tragic symbol of life itself: 'The blossoming colors of the flowers and the purity of these colors; I loved them so very much. I loved the flowers in the context of their destiny: shooting up, blossoming, glowing, pleasing, sloping down, fading, and ending up cast in the pit. Our human destiny is not always as consequent or beautiful' (quoted in ibid., p. 24).