LIEBERMANN, Max

The lightening of Liebermann’s palette in the 1890s and his more rapid completion of work brought him closer to the French. Degas praised the Boys Bathing in 1898, and their respect was mutual, the same year Liebermann published an article on Degas in the periodical “Pan.”

The Country House at Hilversum shows how close Liebermann had come to his Parisian ideal, Manet.

A thematic shift became noticeable in Max Liebermann’s work starting in the 1890s. While the artist had observed the working class population in their day-to-day activities at the start of his career, he was now interested in bourgeois leisure motifs. The choice of subject matter now appeared to coincide with the artist’s own lifestyle habits.

A member of a wealthy family, Liebermann devoted the first part of his career to simple subjects from the lives of peasants and craftsmen. This pastel is one of the last in this series. In the 1890s, he moved from social subject matter to joyful, light-filled landscape and interior.

The first ten years following the founding of the Berlin Secession in 1899 may be considered the heyday of German Impressionism. Important works included Liebermann’s Man with Parrots and The Parrot Walk, as well as numerous beach scenes.

Adolf von Menzel’s virtuoso use of colour influenced his German Impressionist successors. Liebermann’s Munich Beer Garden most strikingly reveals his debt to Menzel.

Liebermann, the eldest of the leading German Impressionists, had roots in realism. Like most of his fellow travellers, he had enjoyed academic training. In 1871 he met Mih�ly Munk�csy, and the impact of the Hungarian’s art confirmed Liebermann in his wish to paint a scene of everyday life in the earthy brown so prized by the realists. This picture was Plucking Geese, a meticulous composition for all its vigorous brushwork.

This painting was exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1874. It had been damned two years earlier in Berlin as representing “the absolute in ugliness.”

When young, Liebermann tackled unpopular subjects including orphanages, old people’s homes, and factories, usually painted with a sunny, matter-of-fact naturalism. Stoical in their making do, his models’ resolutely “good face” is still light-years away from whatever social criticism their condition might imply. However, in their day such subjects suggested an unseemly curiosity concerning subjects best left unseen.

The first ten years following the founding of the Berlin Secession in 1899 may be considered the heyday of German Impressionism. Important works included Liebermann’s Man with Parrots and The Parrot Walk, as well as numerous beach scenes.

In 1871 and subsequently, Liebermann repeatedly visited Holland, some of his stays there being lengthy. In a painting on a Dutch subject, The Orphanage at Amsterdam, he began to put the blacker shades of his early realism aside, and to brighten up his palette. For the first time he rendered sunlight falling through trees perfectly. It is a truly Impressionist perception.

The first ten years following the founding of the Berlin Secession in 1899 may be considered the heyday of German Impressionism. Important works included Liebermann’s Man with Parrots and The Parrot Walk, as well as numerous beach scenes.

In this picture the major interest lies in the contrast between the heroic compositional treatment and the everyday nature of the motif.