Emil Nolde (1867-1956) was one of the major German expressionist painters. His religious scenes, landscapes, and still lifes are distinguished by an intense coloristic richness and primitivistic angularity.

Emil Nolde, born Emil Hansen on a farm in northern Schleswig near the town of Nolde on Aug. 7, 1867, was almost totally self-taught as a painter. Until 1892 he was a wood-carver in furniture factories. He taught drawing at a museum school in St. Gall, Switzerland (1892-1898), and designed postcards with personified images of the Swiss Alps. The money earned permitted him to study painting full time in Munich. In Paris in 1899, he was impressed by Titian, Rembrandt, and Édouard Manet, but he was disappointed by the formal training he received and a year later moved to Copenhagen. His deep despondency and anguished loneliness were only partially relieved by his marriage in 1902, when the artist also changed his name to Nolde...