About the work

The Surheide near Fischerhude was a motif often sought out by Otto Modersohn at the beginning of the 1920s. The at that time hardly wooded landscape was overgrown with individual bushes and a few groups of trees. Between these, sand, heath and pasture areas in the hilly grounds of the dune landscape formed a varied scenery.
Otto Modersohn changed from oil to tempera paint in 1921: “Tempera is wonderful - I can achieve anything with it - visible signature and dullness, thin, drippy, and then 5 minutes later the possibility to layer pastose. No other technique offers these advantages. And then the brilliance of the colours themselves. No paint, no oil paint, and no Weimar and Wurm  paints has that. I dream of the most brilliant colour, the most delicate artistry, who has it? This hasn’t been strived for since Leibl. Mine is of course completely different. The lightness of the French: Renoir, Cézanne always stimulate me. Not Paula’s heaviness. That is the one entirely personal goal.
Otto Modersohn, Diary, 3 July 1921
Cumulus clouds tower to form mountains against a radiant blue summer sky over the landscape, which extends to the centre of the painting. The violet of the blooming heath contrasts with the green of the groups of trees. Breaking up the differentiated dichroism, a golden yellow field glows between them.
The natural forms are subjected to a summarising simplification. Modersohn dispenses without exception with graduating the painting with atmospheric perspective in this period. All pictorial objects seem equidistant. The paintings often have the flat character of a tapestry. The "pictorial mood”, especially characteristic of the late work, retreats almost completely as a result of a turning to the flat character, which is not atypical of the painterly tendency of Post-Expressionism.