Emil Nolde demonstrated his masterful ability in working freely with watercolours in both the small and in the larger format watercolours. His intensely brilliant colours at the highest technical level alone move the viewer emotionally. Emil Nolde dedicated special interest to the watercolour throughout his life.
He saw “the execution of my received gift, in the service of which I worked” in the small format works, as he wrote in the manuscript for the “Unpainted Paintings”.
Again and again there were (contrast) pairs of man and woman, age and youth or brother and sister, on the basis of which he masterfully expressed the ambivalent nature of the human being in countless facets, while they are at the same time all colour.
