Sunflowers (Nolde)

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Emil Nolde, before 1929
Another sunflower painting, Nolde's High Sunflowers , was on loan from the Federal Chancellery
Emil Nolde's garden in Seebüll, which provided motifs for numerous flower paintings

The painting Sunflowers was painted by Emil Nolde in 1926 . It is the first of a series of different sunflower pictures and also the first of over 50 sunflower oil paintings in Nolde's work. The sunflowers occupy a prominent position as a motif among Nolde's flower pictures.

description

The oil painting in landscape format (72 × 90 cm) shows three sunflower blossoms in strong yellow tones with leaves and stems in a frontal view, whereby the image section shows only the upper half of the plants. In the left third of the picture you can see flower umbels and leaves of phlox in shades of yellow and red. Below the high horizon line an undifferentiated dark brown earth tone forms the background, above the horizon clouds and some sky blue can be seen. It is executed in a matt painting style and signed on the lower right edge of the picture. The comparatively gloomy colors that define a large part of the picture area are striking.

Classification in Nolde's work

Nolde painted a total of over 50 oil paintings, which give sunflowers a prominent place in the composition of the picture and also created a series of works in which he dealt intensively with sunflowers. As the first such painting, Nolde titled the painting simply as sunflowers . Other sunflower paintings were given more sophisticated titles such as tall sunflowers , sunflowers in the evening light or dahlias and sunflowers .

For Nolde animals, plants and other natural phenomena were animated and took on almost personal traits. This was especially true of the flowers, which appeared to him as living beings with sensations and moods that reflected his own feelings. The sunflowers are depicted as half-figures with their faces turned towards the viewer. Unlike in the painting Ripe Sunflowers, for example , where the flowers lean downwards, the sunflowers here seem to be looking directly at the viewer.

History of the painting

The sunflowers created in 1926 were shown in the German section of an exhibition of international art in Pittsburgh in 1930 , but did not cause a stir there, as did the other works by Oskar Kokoschka , Max Kaus or Willy Jaeckel . In 1950, the then general director of the Northwest German Broadcasting Corporation (NWDR) , Adolf Grimme , bought the painting for 10,000  DM from Emil Nolde, whom he knew from the pre-war period, for his study. 1955/56 emerged from the NWDR the still existing radio stations NDR and WDR . The painting remained in the property of the NDR and hung there in an office in the Hamburg State Broadcasting House of the NDR on Rothenbaumchaussee until it was stolen from there on Pentecost 1979, together with the Nolde watercolor landscape with a farmhouse .

The theft could not be solved. The rooms had been locked over the weekend and there were no signs of burglary. In 2017, a Berlin widow turned to the legal advisor of the NDR and stated that she was in possession of the picture. Her late husband got it from a friend who was a production employee at NDR. He bought the picture for “little money” from the NDR's stock of props. This NDR employee has also died in the meantime, so that the truthfulness of the information cannot be easily checked. The owner of the picture claims that she thought the picture was a reproduction and, while searching for the location of the original, became aware that it was recorded as stolen. She then contacted the NDR through a lawyer. Due to the legally complex situation (possible appeared adverse possession of the painting by the Berlin Widow) paid the NDR of the owner, who had known nothing of stealing 20,000 EUR for the publication of the painting.

The NDR had the authenticity of the painting checked by the Berlin Rathgen Institute , which came to the conclusion that the painting was actually made in 1926. The long-time director of the Nolde Foundation Seebüll, Manfred Reuther , examined the picture from an art historical point of view. Signature, brushwork, colors, technique, canvas and motifs, but also the condition of the painting all indicate that it was created in the period in question and that Emil Nolde was an artist.

Although the painting is in poor condition, Sotheby’s estimates the value of the sunflowers at between 900,000 and 1.2 million euros. The former director of the Sprengel Museum in Hanover, Ulrich Krempel , who accompanied the return as an expert, estimates that at an auction double that amount, i.e. H. up to 2.4 million euros can be achieved. Another sunflower painting by Nolde, the oil painting Sunflowers in the Evening Light , was auctioned off by the Berlin auction house Villa Grisebach in 2011 for 1.46 million euros. However, the NDR wants to keep the picture and make it accessible to people in its broadcast area. It will therefore be shown in art museums in all four countries in which the NDR broadcasts from 2018 to 2022. The picture will later also be shown in Seebüll in the Nolde Foundation Museum.

Art collection of the NDR

The sunflowers are part of a collection of works by North German artists that the NDR and its predecessor institution NWDR built up with funds from radio contributions in the first decades of its existence. The station's income initially exceeded the costs and the NDR saw it as its mandate to actively promote the arts. For this reason, mainly works by artists who were still alive were purchased. The collection includes works by Otto Modersohn , Paula Modersohn-Becker , Horst Janssen and Günter Grass .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ After almost 40 years: Lost Nolde painting reappeared . In: Spiegel Online . November 26, 2018 ( spiegel.de [accessed December 1, 2018]).
  2. ↑ a b c d NDR: Claudia Christophersen about the sunflower picture by Emil Nolde . ( ndr.de [accessed December 1, 2018]).
  3. ↑ a b c NDR: FAQ: Nolde, the NDR and its art collection. Retrieved December 9, 2018 .
  4. ↑ Werner Haftmann: Emil Nolde . 2nd Edition. M. DuMont Schauberg, Cologne 1959, p. 112 .
  5. ↑ THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION AT PITTSBURGH on JSTOR. Accessed December 18, 2018 .
  6. ↑ a b c d e f Carsten Germis, Hamburg: Miraculous return: Art thriller about stolen "Sunflowers" by Emil Nolde . In: FAZ.NET . November 25, 2018 ( faz.net [accessed December 1, 2018]).
  7. ↑ Nolde's "Sunflowers" achieve almost 1.5 million euros . In: The press . ( diepresse.com [accessed December 1, 2018]).
  8. ^ NDR: stolen Nolde painting reappeared . ( ndr.de [accessed December 1, 2018]).