The Three Kings

Between 1898 and 1937, Emil Nolde produced more than five hundred etchings, woodcuts, and lithographs. Nolde made his first important prints in 1905 at age thirty-eight, and his last print at age seventy.

In 1913 the Cologne Sonderbund, an association of artists and art lovers interested in contemporary art, agreed that the commissioned print they issued annually for their members should be a graphic work by Nolde. At that time, Nolde’s new group of thirteen large-scale lithographs was being printed at the Westphalen lithography workshop in Flensburg. From these he selected for the Sonderbund the picture of the three kings as they journeyed to see the infant Jesus.

In this series, Nolde attempted to master the difficulties of printing in color. After experimenting with various color combinations, he chose, for the Sonderbund commission, to print the three figures in black. (Also, uncharacteristically, he printed his signature as part of the image.) The tall magus is wearing a robe containing streaks of red, and the shoes of the king at the right are covered with splotches of the same color. Nolde exaggerated the rays of light from the star, yellow against the streaky background of light gray-brown, to add to the expressive moment.