Up until the early 1900s Christian Rohlfs (1849-1938) had worked in a rather traditional idiom, akin to open air painting and strongly influenced by Impressionism. Around 1905, however, he became acquainted with Emil Nolde and was thereby introduced to an expressionist painting style.
Through Nolde Rohlfs became acquainted with the works of artists such as Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff and Erich Heckel, who at this time were in the process of founding the artist group Die Brücke. Although Rohlfs was not himself a member of Die Brücke, these acquaintanceships had great significance for his own development as an artist. At a mature age, over 50 years old, he began to work within an expressionist mode of expression. His choice of motif, palette, composition and pictorial structure has a definite affinity with the contemporary works of the Brücke artists’.
