Now belonging to Nolde's last period, a year after his work was declared "degenerate art" by the Nazis. Nolde insists once more on his habitual subject matter of flowers, which in his hands are no longer a pleasant vision of beauty, but dramatized symbols of vigour and what is perishable. The painter explained his criterion of application of colour in this way: "I love the music of colours. One with another or against another: man and woman, pleasure and pain, divinity and devil. The colours also oppose one other mutually: cold and warm, light and dark, opaque and strong".
