Born Emil Hassen in 1867 in Nolde, Germany, Emil Nolde trained as a woodcutter and later took the name of his birthplace instead of going by his family's name. In Munich, he studied painting and temporarily associated himself with the rebel art group, Die Brucke (The Bridge), established in 1905 in Dresden. Originally Nolde's work focused on Christian themes, expressed by employing distortion and aggressive brushstrokes and colors in his paintings, etchings, lithographs, and woodcuts. Living as a recluse on the German North Sea coast until his death in 1956, he experimented with landscapes, seascapes, and still-lifes.

Emil Nolde is regarded as one of the most noteworthy Expressionist painters. Portraits play a prominent role in the artist's oeuvre, particularly those of his early creative period. During those years in which Nolde's art developed to maturity, his painting was enriched by an innovative power that inspired later artists well into the twentieth century. Some 60 of the unparalleled portraits completed by Emil Nolde between 1903 and 1918 are presented and described in this book. These works include the masterful self-portraits of 1916-17, the famous double portrait Brother and Sister of 1918, and his portrait-style images of people he encountered while traveling in New Guinea from 1913 to 1914. The autonomy and immediacy of Nolde's painting is particularly evident in these works. Fascinated by the obscure inner-stirrings of human identity, he developed an unusal, gestural mode of painting.