The figure paintings also dominated in the late work of Emil Nolde. He would still paint more than a hundred oil paintings following the end of the Second World War: “For me, they were like accumulated, most intimate perceptions that were able to free themselves. I initially painted a few garden paintings with fervidly red, large poppies, to become accustomed to the colours. These were followed by ‘Harmonie der Weisheit’, ‘Musik’, ‘Leid volles Glück’, ‘Vater, Mutter, Sohn’, ‘Fischer und Töchterchen’, [...]. – The colours flowed and became chords.” The painting “Fischer und Töchterchen”, dated 1946, shows a white-haired, bearded man as a shoulder-length portrait in the left half of the painting, beside him his beautiful daughter with blonde hair. The quiet sea before the orange-red, cloudy sky in the background, with two fishing boats with white sails at the right edge of the painting presents itself as an idyllic seascape. Emil Nolde here joins all his mastery of the figure painting with the maritime landscapes. The mature artist pictorially intensified the harmonies and intimate relationships of his figure paintings by reducing the brushwork and allowing it to become calmer. The emotional content of his paintings comes to the fore.
