Emil Nolde: Sonnenuntergang

“Painted in 1909, Sonnenuntergang (Sunset) is one of the earliest of Nolde’s celebrated seascapes…

For Nolde, who grew up on the coast and was to spend almost all his life near the ocean, the sea was an imposing and powerful presence, an elemental force of nature that was an important and recurrent feature of both his life and his art. In Sonnenuntergang Nolde fuses the three distinct elements of the painting, sky, land and sea into an intense and highly emotive play of colour and light. Believing, like many of his Brücke colleagues, that colour was a direct means of expressing emotion, Nolde has attempted in this work to convey the drama of an ocean sunset through a heightened use of colour and a highly spontaneous if not impulsive use of brushstroke.

Like his predecessor and, perhaps greatest influence, Vincent Van Gogh, Nolde has worked swiftly over the surface of the picture in a manner that gives energy and life to the scene and heightens its emotional intensity.”
Christie’s