Emil Nolde loved plants and saw recognized their true nature. No matter where he settled with his wife Ada, every home was surrounded by a lush flower garden. Each one a little Eden interspersed with splendid flowerbeds. All the bright plants that can be found in Nolde's pictures thrived in their garden under the loving care of Ada and her helpers. Nolde's garden was especially home of dahlias, sunflowers and poppies. In his works he takes us into beautiful gardens in summer and fresh air. Initially, sunflowers were not part of Nolde's imagery and it was not until the late 1920s that first oil paintings with sunflowers, inspired by the garden in Seebüll, were created. Various watercolors with this motif would follow. They were a particular pride of the gardener Emil Nolde, who happily wrote to his close friend Hans Fehr: "The sunflowers rise so high and I, with my neck bent backwards, stand in front of the beauty in gratitude and amazement. There have been a number of the most beautiful days here, I see colors that are hard to comprehend, and their scents waft into the house." (quoted from: Hans Fehr, Emil Nolde. Ein Buch der Freundschaft, Cologne 1957, p. 124).
He usually depicts the large flower heads in close-up view against the dark blue of the sky, sometimes with their heads tilted, sometimes with their petals dishevelled by the wind. The large flowers are usually displayed in a narrow image section without the spatial context of the garden. Nolde's flower paintings are an expression of mood and emotion. In his eyes, flowers have a soul and, in particular, sunflowers with their man-sized stems and large heads are, for Nolde, creatures with humanoid feelings. They symbolize the endless cycle of life and death. "I loved the flowers in their fate: sprouting, blooming, glowing brightly, delighting, bowing, withering, ending up in the pit. Our human fate is not always as consistent and beautiful [..]" (Emil Nolde, quoted from: Martin Urban, Emil Nolde - Blumen und Tiere, 1965, p. 7/8) In a detailed close-up view he sets the stage for the flower heads, they are the sole actors, their surroundings are irrelevant for the composition. It is only the dark green-blue of the leaves that plays a role as a reinforcing complementary color to the bright yellow of the sunflower heads, which reach up to the sky. [SM]