Born in 1867 as Emil Hansen in Nolde (Northern Schleswig), he first trained as a wood-carver in 1884–88 in Flensburg. From 1892–97 he worked as an art teacher at the Museum of Trade in St. Gallen, Switzerland. On his walking tours through the Alps he designed postcards with mountain scenery in watercolours. The successful sale of these postcards gave him the financial backing to work as a freelance artist. He went to Munich where he attended Friedrich Fehr’s painting school in 1898. In 1899 he moved to Dachau to study with Adolf Hölzel. In 1900 he moved to Paris for a few months to study at the Académie Julian. In 1901 he took a studio in Berlin and in the following year he married Ada Vilstrup and started calling himself ‘Emil Nolde’. They moved to a farmhouse on the island of Alsen in the Baltic Sea where they spent their summers, moving back to Berlin for the winter months. This routine was interspersed with various travels. In 1906/07 Nolde was a member of the artist group Brücke and in 1908/09 of the Berlin Secession. After his works were rejected by the Secession in 1910, he co-founded the ‘Neue Secession Berlin’. In 1913/14 he was invited as expedition artist on a voyage researching medicine and demographics in the South Seas. In the 1920s he became widely acclaimed as an artist. Nolde built a studio and home based on his own designs in Seebüll where he lived from 1927 until his death. Between 1933 and 1945, Nolde was defamed as a ‘degenerate artist’ by the Nazis, his paintings were confiscated and he was debarred from working. After the Second World War, Nolde was given many prizes and awards in Germany. He died in Seebüll in 1956.