Nolde’s dubious political orientation and anti-Semitic leanings in the 1920s didn’t prevent the Nazis from considering his art degenerate and expunging him from museums and galleries after they took over.
Ironically Nolde’s predilection for Old Testament themes meant that he was in effect painting portraits of Jews all the time…
“This painting may allude to two goldsmiths divinely selected to make religious objects, and whose work so pleased God that Moses blessed them (Exodus 35:30–43). Such images are not literal illustrations, Nolde explained, but visions that sprang from his own imagination, driven by the spontaneous release of emotion. ‘In art,’ he wrote, ‘I fight for unconscious creation. Labor destroys paintings.’” — Cleveland Museum of Art online caption
Goldsmiths, 1919 - Oil on wood (Cleveland Museum of Art)
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