Particularly in the last years of his life, Nolde repeatedly revisited one of his early motifs, the floral still life. What is so fascinating about these sheets is the almost somnambulistic certainty with which Emil Nolde created watercolors of flowers. In particular, but not alone, it is the unusual, almost magical world of color that makes for the secret magic of these sheets. It is also the composition as such that contributes to the intense overall impression. The special technique of wet-on-wet painting, which Nolde perfected in these works, is supplemented in his late works by the use of tempera, which the artist found to be particularly lightfast, resulting in an extremely charming interplay between glazed and strongly opaque parts, which in the present sheet accentuates the tulip and poppy blossoms in a particularly expressive manner. It is therefore not surprising that floral still lifes of appealing flower arrangements with luminous and subtle colors are a particularly popular group in the artist's oeuvre today. [SM]