(Nolde, Schleswig 1867–1956 Seebüll)
Frauenbildnis (Profil nach links) / Frauenbildnis (rotbraun und grün), Portrait of woman (profile to the left) / Portrait of woman (red brown and green), around 1930/35, signed Nolde, watercolor on japan paper, 47 x 34.7 cm, framed

This work is registered at the Stiftung Seebüll Ada and Emil Nolde under the no. 1128. It is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity delivered by Dr. Martin Urban (in copy) in 1983, certified and attested by Dr. Manfred Reuther, former Director of the Foundation.

Provenance:
Nolde Foundation Seebüll until 1971
Gallery Hoffmann, Hamburg, received in exchange from Nolde Foundation Seebüll, 1971–1983
Sale Kornfeld Gallery, Bern, 22 – 24 June 1983
Charles Tabachnick, Toronto, Canada
Sale Sotheby’s, New York, 19 November 1986
Private Collection, Switzerland

The artist’s motifs, whether landscapes, flowers or portraits, are not to be understood as images of reality. Nolde uses color to express the experience of nature, a mood. Thus, Nolde’s women’s heads are not so much portraits, they are rarely identifiable persons, rather the artist has freely invented his heads. “Many may have been created from memory, lifting the individual into the general, the psychologically particular into a plane of poetic reality. Portraits of women are in the majority; important carrier of expression are colors”.
Martin Urban, in: exh. cat. Württembergischer Kunstverein, Emil Nolde, Stuttgart 1988, page 113

The present work shows a young woman with rosy cheeks and brown-red hair, wearing an orange dress, in lateral profile against a green background. Nolde merely sketches the silhouette of the striking woman. He applied the colours, using the wet-on-wet technique in a strong orange and green to thin japan paper. His emphasis on the face of the young woman exaggerates the luminosity of the colours and it becomes clear that the effect was his primary interest.