An autumn evening that could hardly be more transcendent. Grassland and trees sway gently in the breeze blowing in from the sea, while the evening sun slowly disappears behind the clouds. The picture seems to fall out of any temporal dimension: lonely and quiet, yet equally penetrating and full of vitality.
After Nolde’s marriage to Ada Vilstrup in 1902, the Nolde couple moved to the island of Alsen for the summer months, where the artist, driven by financial constraints, worked in a hut on the beach. Inspired by the nature there, he increasingly focussed on lyrical, dreamy landscape motifs. It was the forces of nature in particular that repeatedly cast a spell over the artist: »Everything primal and primordial captivated my senses. The great, roaring sea is still in its original state, the wind, the sun and even the starry sky are almost as they were fifty thousand years ago.« In the years around the turn of the century, Nolde’s style recalls the painting and art understanding of Romanticism, not least in this work through the precise study of clouds, the poetic spontaneity, and the capturing of the natural moment on the enormously wide canvas.
As a season, autumn shows change and transience like no other. Emil Nolde captures this mood in an incredibly sensitive and moving way, creating a unique atmosphere. Staffage elements and people are completely absent. The presence of the landscape is only given by the power of colour.