Emil Nolde
: Portraits of Women

1908 *
* – Flower Garden. A Peasant Woman Knitting

At the center of the Viewing Room stands the painting "Flower Garden. Knitting Peasant Woman" (1908) by Emil Nolde. It depicts a female figure completely absorbed in her handiwork, seemingly nestled within a lush, overgrown garden landscape. The figure is not conceived as an individualized portrait, but rather as part of a color-saturated, vegetal organism. The pictorial space is structured by layered planes; the sense of depth arises less from perspective than from zones of color. Dominant are luminous shades of red, yellow, and green, applied in thick impasto and set in striking contrast. The contours appear partially dissolved, while the vegetation seems to shimmer. Human and nature do not stand in a hierarchical relationship—the peasant woman is integrated into the field of flowers both in color and form. The motif combines intimacy, rural simplicity, and an almost ecstatic colorfulness.

The painting belongs to the early phase of German Expressionism and can be chronologically situated within the context of the "Brücke" artists’ group, with which Nolde was closely associated in 1906–07. Characteristic features include a departure from naturalism, the expressive autonomy of color, and a tendency toward formal simplification. The garden functions not as a topographical location but as an emotionally charged space of color. The painterly language shows affinities with Vincent van Gogh in the intensification of the palette and the gestural application of paint, yet at the same time reveals a specifically Nordic sensibility: less urban-modern than rather shaped by a mystical understanding of nature. The motif of the working peasant woman combines rural genre depiction with Expressionist subjectivity—not a socially realist account, but a vision of primal authenticity. The painting thus stands at the threshold between Late Impressionism and an autonomous Expressionist visual language.

Within Nolde’s oeuvre, the work marks an early manifestation of those themes that would later become central: gardens, flowers, luminous pigments, and the fusion of figure and nature. Nolde’s own garden repeatedly became an iconic pictorial space in his work; the provenance via the Nolde Foundation in Seebüll further underscores the painting’s significance within the artist’s biography. The scene still retains a certain tranquility and representational clarity; in later flower paintings, representational elements increasingly dissolve in favor of chromatic ecstasy. “Knitting Peasant Woman” thus depicts a transitional state: between narrative motif and pure painterly intensity. The work documents the moment when Nolde finally established color as the primary vehicle of meaning—a decisive step toward his later, almost visionary flower paintings.

1907 *
* – Miss Dr. Sch. (Rosa Schapire)

The etching *Fräulein Dr. Sch. (Rosa Schapire) *, created in 1907, is an early and expressive work on paper by Emil Nolde and depicts one of the most significant intellectual patrons of German Expressionism. Rosa Schapire (1874–1954) was a pioneering German art historian, writer, collector, and advocate of modern art. As a dedicated women’s rights activist, she was among the first women in Germany to earn a doctorate in 1904 and became an important patron of the artists of Die Brücke, particularly Karl Schmidt-Rottluff.

The year 1907 also marks Nolde’s association with Brücke group of artists, making this portrait a particularly striking work from the artist’s celebrated Brücke. In this striking etching, Nolde captures both Schapire’s individuality and intellectual intensity through a direct graphic language characteristic of his early printmaking. The expressive treatment of line and shadow reflects the experimental spirit that accompanied the emergence of German Expressionism.

Rosa Schapire (1874–1954) was a pioneering German art historian, writer, collector, and advocate of modern art.