“Junge Familie” (Young family)

Details

The work is listed as “1949 Young Family” in the artist’s list of works created between 1930 and 1951.
Urban 1327.

Exhibition:

Galerie Thomas, Munich 1981, cat. no. 81, with col. illus;

The George Economou Collection, Municipal Gallery of Art, Athens 2011, p. 118, with full-colour illus. illus;

Emil Nolde. Figure, Galerie Thomas, Munich 2021, p. 28f.

Provenance:

Nolde Foundation Seebüll;

Knoedler Gallery, New York (1967);

Private collection, Europe.

Description

– Harmonious presentation that radiates grace, familiarity and warmth

– The motif can be associated with the theme of the “Holy Family”, the archetype of the ideal family

– Touching painting from Nolde’s late work, which goes back to a watercolour from the series of ‘Unpainted Pictures’ created between 1938 and 1945

Although Nolde is associated with brightly coloured flower paintings, colourful landscapes and turbulent seas, he saw himself first and foremost as a portrait and figure painter. He also emphasised this in his writings: “People are my pictures. Laugh, rejoice, cry or be happy, you are my pictures, and the sound of your voice, the essence of your characters in all their diversity, you are the painter’s colours.” Figure paintings dominate the artist’s late work. After the end of the Second World War, he painted over a hundred more oil paintings.

Above all, Nolde favoured the depiction of figures as lovers or in family groups in order to portray human emotions. In Nolde’s work, the warm relationship between mother and child is a frequently recurring theme, which is taken up in all artistic techniques. In these paintings, the figure of the father is often upright and serious, but he is also moved protectively into the near background. The relationship between mother and child dominates the foreground. In addition, there is a considerable number of different family pictures, some portraits, some fictitious or based on biblical content.

Nolde painted our “Young Family” in 1949, three years after the death of his beloved wife Ada. The artist longingly evokes the trinity of the family he never had. The painting radiates harmony, grace and intimacy. Nolde paints the young mother in half-length, slightly shifted from the centre to the left. She holds the child in her arms, whose blue eyes seek eye contact with her. She is wearing a light-coloured cloak over a red robe and a light blue bonnet or hat on her head. The proud father stands modestly on the right-hand side, behind the woman, smiling at his young family. The bright yellow background is reflected in the faces of the three figures and lends the composition a warm, harmonious tone. The depiction is reminiscent of Nolde’s religious paintings. It can be associated with the theme of the “Holy Family”, the archetype of the ideal family. The woman’s robe colours, blue and red, the colours of Virgin, the Mother of God, also refer to this. Virgin is traditionally depicted in art with a red cloak and a blue cape.

Nolde was expelled from the Reich Chamber of Culture in 1941 and banned from his profession. He began painting small formats in watercolour as early as 1938, which he later wanted to turn into oil paintings. He calls them the ‘unpainted pictures’, as he can no longer show them in public from 1941 due to the ban on his profession, and gives many of these over 1,300 small-format watercolours to friends for safekeeping.

Our painting is one of a large series of works that Emil Nolde painted on the basis of the ‘Unpainted Pictures’. The Seebüll Ada and Emil Nolde Foundation’s collection includes the corresponding watercolours from this series, such as ‘Young Family’ and ‘Happy Family’.