Hamburg harbour, tugs and piles

Details

With a photo expertise by Professor Dr. Manfred Reuther, Klockries, dated November 2023. Provenance:private collection, Cologne;Grisebach, Berlin 4.6.1993, lot 22; Christie’s, London 29.6.2000, lot 598; private collection, Paris.

Description

• Large-format Indian ink drawing displaying great spontaneity and artistic skill
• Concise, calligraphic style of rendering motifs, making them appear almost abstract
• Views of Hamburg harbour remain among Emil Nolde’s most popular motifs to this day Emil Nolde lived in Hamburg’s harbor district for a few weeks in the spring of 1910 and there immersed himself in the busy world of the port. He found countless motifs in this ever-changing industrial landscape with its ships and tugboats rocking and smoking on the harbour.
“What Nolde describes in his memoires as intoxicating, almost obsessive work led to results in which, in his own way, balance spontaneity and artistic control. In keeping with the technique, the style of the drawings is particularly spontaneous, rendered with a broad, often dry ink brush on handmade paper. Abbreviated to the point of abstraction, they allow the working process to remain visible. In their ornamental rhythm they are reminiscent of East Asian characters, calligraphic and full of nervous energy. We recognise the characteristic arc of a bridge or pile moorings, we get a sense of the jetty and of a steamship with smoke. It would be impossible to gain any topographical localisation of the motifs in Hamburg harbour, they are simply evidence of the artist’s visual experience. (…) Although the works were never directly used as preliminary drawings for prints, the way in which they are made up of lines and dots paves the way for later implementation in graphic form in which the depiction and the drawing itself merge into one flat rhythm.” (Hanna Hohl, Emil Nolde und der Hamburger Hafen, Bilderhefte der Hambuger Kunsthalle VIII, Hamburg 1988, p. 6f.). In the same year, Nolde created a loose series of 18 depictions of steamships and Hamburg harbour motifs, which are among the most impressive examples of German printmaking in the early 20th century. In these works, Nolde demonstrates his mastery of the diverse etching techniques with which he tackles a motif that was completely new at the time and the printmaking challenges that accomany with it. Understandably, both Nolde’s harbour views and his steamship prints remain very popular with collectors to this day.