Bauernhaus in Holstein 1922

Christian Rohlfs made this watercolor painting, ‘Bauernhaus in Holstein,’ whenever he felt like it, or when the light was right! Looking at it, I can imagine him working en plein air, letting the landscape guide his hand. See how the colors—mostly yellows and browns—blend and bleed into each other, giving the whole scene a hazy, dreamlike quality? It’s like Rohlfs wasn't just painting what he saw, but also how he felt. Those dark, scribbled lines that define the edges of the farmhouse aren't precise, but they give the structure a kind of raw, almost shaky energy. Check out the upper part of the roof, how the ink bleeds into the wash. It reminds me of the way we often remember places, not as sharp, clear images, but as smudges of feeling and atmosphere. And that little figure on the right—is it a farmer, a traveler? Whoever it is, they're swallowed up by the hugeness of the building, which is itself swallowed up by the landscape. I think of Emil Nolde, another German Expressionist who found such freedom in watercolor, where the image is always provisional. Art isn't about answers, but about embracing the questions.