Emil Nolde - Landschaft mit Mutterpferd, 1925

 

Emil Nolde Landschaft mit Mutterpferd, 1925 Landscape with mother horse . 1925. Oil on canvas. Urban 1018. Signed lower left. Once more signed and titled on the stretcher. 73 x 88 cm (28.7 x 34.6 in)

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Object description

Landscape with mother horse . 1925.
Oil on canvas.
Urban 1018. Signed lower left. Once more signed and titled on the stretcher. 73 x 88 cm (28.7 x 34.6 in).

• A work with an eventful history - it can only be seen in public for three days before the exhibition closes and Nolde hides the work in a barn until the end of World War II.
• Complete provenance - so far only two owners after Nolde himself.
• The painting "Young Horses" with a similar motif is in the collection of the Guggenheim Museum, New York.
• Mysterious change from "landscape with a white mother horse" to a "landscape with a 'blue' mother horse" .

PROVENANCE: Christian Thomsen, Husum (since 1950, directly from the artist -1984, Sotheby's, London, December 4, 1984).
Private collection (acquired from aforementioned in 1984).

EXHIBITION: Emil Nolde. Paintings and watercolors, Das Kunsthaus, Rudolf Probst, Mannheim, 1937.

LITERATURE: Sotheby's, London, December 4, 1984, lot 37.

"Here the autumn winds pass from sea to sea over the house."
Emil Nolde to his friend and collector, Museum Director Max Sauerland, on October 25, 1925.
"Our landscape is modest, far from anything intoxicating and exuberant, we know that, but it gives the intimate observer an infinite amount of quiet, intimate beauty, of austere size and stormy, wild life for his love for it."
Emil Nolde, traveling, ostracism, liberation. 1919-1946, ed. from the Seebüll Foundation Ada and Emil Nolde, 3rd edition, Cologne 1978, p. 9.

essay

The old house near the west coast
Probably in 1913, before the trip to the South Seas, Ada and Emil Nolde bought "Utenwarf", an old, abandoned farmhouse in need of renovation, with some land on the Wiedau near Tønder. The couple developed a deep bond with this piece of land, even if the beginning was a bit bumpy. The war and her financial situation after her return from the expedition from Asia in 1914 prevented a new building as well as a renovation. "We couldn't do anything with our 'Utenwarf'", says Nolde in his biography "Mein Leben". “The old house was uninhabitable, we weren't allowed to build a new one during the war. But we were irresistibly drawn to there. We packed a few suitcases and moved over. The old boat belonging to the house was waiting for us. The New Guinea equipment and camp beds were back in service. Our wanderlust and the thirst for action were on the move again. We got a spade and a scythe. We fished, we cleared the ditch, and we worked in the garden where everything was a wilderness. We mended the house and lived like gypsies live. [..] During these weeks I didn’t work artistically at Utenwarf. But before that I had drawn and painted without interruption for almost two years, and many small notes and sketches of country life, the grazing animals, the young horses and the clouds above were made as preliminary work for pictures. I was grown together with the clouds and moods of my native region, something special and beautiful stayed in my memory forever. ”(Emil Nolde, Mein Leben, Cologne 1976/1993, p. 308) Our wanderlust and the thirst for action were on the move again. We got a spade and a scythe. We fished, we cleared the ditch, and we worked in the garden where everything was a wilderness. We mended the house and lived like gypsies live. [..] During these weeks I didn’t work artistically at Utenwarf. But before that I had drawn and painted without interruption for almost two years, and many small notes and sketches of country life, the grazing animals, the young horses and the clouds above were made as preliminary work for pictures. I was grown together with the clouds and moods of my native region, something special and beautiful stayed in my memory forever. ”(Emil Nolde, Mein Leben, Cologne 1976/1993, p. 308) Our wanderlust and the thirst for action were on the move again. We got a spade and a scythe. We fished, we cleared the ditch, and we worked in the garden where everything was a wilderness. We mended the house and lived like gypsies live. [..] During these weeks I didn’t work artistically at Utenwarf. But before that I had drawn and painted without interruption for almost two years, and many small notes and sketches of country life, the grazing animals, the young horses and the clouds above were made as preliminary work for pictures. I was grown together with the clouds and moods of my native region, something special and beautiful stayed in my memory forever. ”(Emil Nolde, Mein Leben, Cologne 1976/1993, p. 308) and we worked in the garden where everything was a desolate wilderness. We mended the house and lived like gypsies live. [..] During these weeks I didn’t work artistically at Utenwarf. But before that I had drawn and painted without interruption for almost two years, and many small notes and sketches of country life, the grazing animals, the young horses and the clouds above were made as preliminary work for pictures. I was grown together with the clouds and moods of my native region, something special and beautiful stayed in my memory forever. ”(Emil Nolde, Mein Leben, Cologne 1976/1993, p. 308) and we worked in the garden where everything was a desolate wilderness. We mended the house and lived like gypsies live. [..] During these weeks I didn’t work artistically at Utenwarf. But before that I had drawn and painted without interruption for almost two years, and many small notes and sketches of country life, the grazing animals, the young horses and the clouds above were made as preliminary work for pictures. I was grown together with the clouds and moods of my native region, something special and beautiful stayed in my memory forever. ”(Emil Nolde, Mein Leben, Cologne 1976/1993, p. 308) But before that I had drawn and painted without interruption for almost two years, and many small notes and sketches of country life, the grazing animals, the young horses and the clouds above were made as preliminary work for pictures. I was grown together with the clouds and moods of my native region, something special and beautiful stayed in my memory forever. ”(Emil Nolde, Mein Leben, Cologne 1976/1993, p. 308) But before that I had drawn and painted without interruption for almost two years, and many small notes and sketches of country life, the grazing animals, the young horses and the clouds above were made as preliminary work for pictures. I was grown together with the clouds and moods of my native region, something special and beautiful stayed in my memory forever. ”(Emil Nolde, Mein Leben, Cologne 1976/1993, p. 308)
Based on these sketches, five landscapes are created with various depictions of horses in the pasture. In 1925, during his summer stay at Utenwarf, he took up the subject again and “Landscape with a mother horse” was created. It was not until 1916 that Ada and Emil Nolde Utenwarf were able to convert and expand according to their wishes and create their widely famous garden. This marked the beginning of a new artistic phase for Nolde. “It was wonderful when everything around us was only water for miles around, when the high sky was reflected, or when at night the moon with its cold shine formed a silver fairy-tale land. We also liked it when the way from the old dike to us was marked out with sticks, and when our horse had to pull the wagon through the water as high as its legs were. And it was nice when the wind whipped the waves in long strips, or the colored morning and evening clouds doubled in the water. A lot of romance and a lot of hardship, but beauty was able to replace everything else, ”said Nolde enthusiastically about the new landscape (ibid., P. 321). The “landscape with mother horse” could be a farewell greeting to his beloved Utenwarf. During the same period in which the painting was created - in the summer of 1925 - the Nolde couple felt compelled to give up the homestead. The Danish government plans to drain and cultivate the Wiedau lowlands; thus the original character of the landscape is lost. A fact that Nolde cannot accept. Not far from Utenwarf, the Noldes found an empty homestead on a terp on the German side.

"I was grown together with the clouds and moods of my home region"
And his feeling for this deeply loved region is shared with us when we look at the landscape with the blue mother horse and the contrasting full red mane. It has recently thrown, stands behind the reddish-brown foal to protect it from the sometimes sharp wind, on the edge of a narrow canal with a sluice that cuts through the wide grassland for drainage. The clouds hang low, are bulging with rain, their edges reflect the yolk-yellow light of the setting sun. The darkness of night slowly falls over the wide, deep green pastureland with the shadowy silhouette of a courtyard far in the background. Nolde is visibly impressed by the beauty of the harsh landscape and the natural spectacle of clouds, water and constantly changing light conditions. At the same time, he finds the originality he is looking for, which makes it possible to immerse himself in and become one with nature during his intensive painting processes. The dramatic, image-dominating sky over a wide landscape becomes the trademark of Nolde's art. Here he developed his most beautiful and impressive compositions. Nolde remained connected to nature throughout his life. Often he focuses either on the sole representation of the landscape or on detailed animal observations, such as those created in the Berlin zoo, among other places. In “Landscape with Mother Horse” we have a special combination of both. It tells of Nolde's deep connection to his Frisian homeland, to the land between the seas - to this flat, pristine stretch of land that many would call boring. Nolde lavishly stages this supposedly unexciting march. He sets the horizon low in order to give the sky and its phenomena the greatest possible space and effect. Depending on the season, the weather and the time of day, it captures the special features of the natural spectacle. The elements, nature and its creatures form an inseparable unit. Nolde captures this magic in his works. Like no other, Nolde is able to capture his empathic sense of nature on canvas. Nolde captures this magic in his works. Like no other, Nolde is able to capture his empathic sense of nature on canvas. Nolde captures this magic in his works. Like no other, Nolde is able to capture his empathic sense of nature on canvas.

The untold story behind the picture
As usual, the artist notes his name on the stretcher with an ink brush and adds the title: in this case “Landscape”. The artist adds “(with white mother horse)” to the title with blue chalk in brackets. We find this title in the list of paintings created by the artist under the year "1930: '1925 Landscape (with a white mother horse)" ". After Nolde had painted over the formerly white horse with blue, he corrected the title and crossed out “white” with a pencil. When Nolde will change the color of the horse is uncertain. Prof. Manfred Reuther, long-time director of the Ada and Emil Nolde Foundation and an accomplished connoisseur, suspects the period between 1930 and 1937, perhaps in connection with the preparation of the Mannheim exhibition. In August 1937, the art dealer Rudolf Probst is planning an exhibition in his “Das Kunsthaus” in Mannheim for the painter's seventieth birthday with at least 92 paintings and watercolors. After three days, it is closed by the President of the Reichskunstkammer Ziegler, who has come with three gentlemen, and the sale of the pictures is forbidden. In the chronologically ordered list of pictures from October 4, 1937, Rudolf Probst names the painting "Landscape (with a mother horse)" (Urban 1018) from 1925, which is now different from its origins will have changed. The exhibition at the Kunsthaus Probst runs parallel to the infamous Munich exhibition “Degenerate Art”. According to Probst, the exhibition is well attended at first, but the parallel to the Munich exhibition must ultimately lead to the forced closure. The 92 pictures exhibited there, including “Landscape with Mother Horse”, will initially remain in Mannheim and will only be evacuated from the endangered Mannheim in autumn 1939 after the outbreak of war. You will be taken to a safe, unknown location in the countryside. His accomplice in this is Alfred Heuer, who is a friend of both Nolde and Ernst Barlach. They forge the plan to store the 14 picture boxes on a farm in Seestermühe near Elmshorn. The farmer is a small local functionary of the Nazi party, with whom no one would suspect the boxes of ostracized German avant-garde art. The monthly rent of 100 Reichsmarks probably doesn't make him think about the contents of the boxes. And indeed - the hiding place, as Heuer and Nolde hoped, protects the paintings from renewed access by the Ziegler commission. The plan works: in May 1947 the paintings are returned to Seebüll without damage. In 1948 we can still locate the picture with Nolde. In the picture room in Seebüll he presents, among other things, “Landscape with Mother Horse” to a journalist. In 1950 the plant was owned by Christian Thomsen in Husum.

A blue horse
At first glance, one could cautiously assume that Emil Nolde is quoting a blue horse by Franz Marc. This assumption cannot be dismissed out of hand, because Nolde is the idea of ​​the "Blue Rider", the typical blue horse pictures and their exhibitions in the Sturm Gallery opened by Herwarth Walden in Berlin in 1912 are familiar. He registered Marc's death in 1916 near Verdun with sorrow and he knows the “Tower of the Blue Horses”, which Marc painted in 1913 in Sindelsdorf, Upper Bavaria. In July 1919, Ludwig Justi, director of the National Gallery in Berlin, acquired the work of Marc's widow Maria Marc and the expressionist work, which has become a symbol, hangs in a prominent place in the Kronprinzenpalais, the new department for contemporary art in the Nationalgalerie. Since the establishment of the Kronprinzenpalais, Justi has also met Emil Nolde to discuss purchases and loans for his own artist's room and to realize step by step. Nolde probably painted over the white horse to the blue horse between 1930 and 1937. The inspiration for this could be two related, retrospective memorial exhibitions that were opened in the Berlin galleries of von der Heyde and Nierendorf at the beginning of May 1936 on the 20th anniversary of Franz Marc's death. And last but not least, on this occasion, Alois Schardt publishes a first catalog raisonné for Franz Marc in Berlin. Three years earlier, Schardt, succeeding Ludwig Justi as director of the Nationalgalerie, revised the compilation of his works in the Kronprinzenpalais with Nolde, to stage a politically less provocative hanging. Whether Nolde actually quotes Marc's blue horse or whether artistic aesthetic demands have guided him remains speculative. With the blue horse, however, Nolde succeeds in a wonderful way in inspiring the eerie suggestion of the Nordic landscape under a moving sky. [MvL / SM]