Signed lower right.
On August 31, 1930 Nolde painted a watercolour portrait of the same woman, which he - as an exception - dated exactly and wrote on it "Seltsam schöne Frau" (Strangely beautiful woman). He created an oil painting the same year, showing her in a yellow dress. Werner Haftmann wrote: "Portraits are, except for the self portraits and those of Ada, rare in Nolde's oeuvre. A picture could only be created when Nolde entered into an inner relationship with a person or was interested in a certain typology." In this case the interest was surely given. The sitter is Margarete Turgel, whom the artist met on the isle of Sylt in the North Sea in 1930. He wrote about her to Ada: "She is small, almost ugly in repose, animated she is beautiful and often very beautiful. Her colours are black and yellow. I consider her somewhat cold, but also very dark and earnest".
