Lofoten Landscape with Lake, 1938

About the Work

In both of Ernst Wilhelm Nay’s "Lofoten Pictures", the sky is wide open and the clouds look as if they are being hurtled along by the wind. The artist represented the natural elements as well as the figures in vibrant colour forms that join organically, sometimes even blending into one another. By these means, Nay sought to lend expression to the forces of nature and man. To convey the Lofoten Island inhabitants’ deep ties to nature, he employed the classical wet-on-wet technique that makes the watercolours fluid.

About the Acquisition

From 1900 onwards, the Frankfurt chemist and industrialist Carl Hagemann (1867‒1940) assembled one of the most important private collections of modern art. It included numerous paintings, drawings, watercolours and prints, especially by members of the artist group “Die Brücke”. After Carl Hagemann died in an accident during the Second World War, the then Städel director Ernst Holzinger arranged for Hagemann’s heirs to evacuate his collection with the museum’s collection. In gratitude, the family donated almost all of the works on paper to the Städel Museum in 1948. Further donations and permanent loans as well as purchases of paintings and watercolours from the Hagemann estate helped to compensate for the losses the museum had suffered in 1937 as part of the Nazi’s “Degenerate Art” campaign. Today, the Hagemann Collection forms the core of the Städel museum’s Expressionist collection.