Marina

Initially, Emil Nolde approached the representation of the harbour landscape. In the foreground, he showed the perspective of an old harbour pier fixed between tall stilts, which create expressive, dark, vertical patches contrasting with the misty aerial distance of the harbour basin. Their rhythm is reinforced by a dark patch of oak dalby visible at the right edge of the composition. The juxtaposition of black patches of piles with the gloomy sky covered with low clouds of smoke from steamboats, and the emptiness of the pier, create an atmosphere of melancholy, characteristic of the late autumn stagnation in the port.The print, created in 1910 using etching and dry point techniques, was made on handmade velin paper with a watermark: N Holland 1914, the earliest year the paper was produced. It belongs to a group of prints created during Nolde's stay in Hamburg in 1910. At that time, he drew various urban motifs in ink, including views of historic buildings such as St Catherine's Church, but above all, he depicted harbour landscapes and ships. Based on the drawings, he later created graphics, which he printed in the following years. The composition with the harbour pier was made in three states, i.e., versions of the development of the plate - the printing matrix. Only ten copies were printed from the first two states: at the Genthe Publishing House in Hamburg and the Carl Sabo company in Berlin. In 1914, an unknown number of copies were printed from the third state of the plate, from which the Szczecin print comes. Emil Hansen was born in 1867 near Nolde, from which he took his name. He died in 1956 in Seebüll. In 1892, he was a drawing teacher at the Industrie- und Gewerbeschule (School of Industry and Crafts) in Sankt Gallen, where he became acquainted with the work of Ferdinand Holder and Arnold Böcklin, which was close to his feeling for art. The painting course he took up in Munich was continued at the Académie Julian in Paris. On his return, he came into contact with the Expressionists in the group Die Brücke. He worked in solitude, travelling through Europe, Asia and the Pacific islands. He was not appreciated until 1931.

Ewa Gwiazdowska