Initially derided as a poor man’s painter, he portrayed the bourgeois elite – and thereby marked the path from naturalism to impressionistic color worlds. Even 175 years after his birth, Max Liebermann’s versatility fascinates.
If you like Liebermann, you can’t do much wrong at first. Only a few German painters of international renown combine so many important artistic qualities: started out with a furor in naturalism, developed into one of the most important German impressionists, scarcely shied away from a subject, was active as a collector and consultant and then really stirred up the art world.
Liebermann was born on July 20, 175 years ago. In an interview with the dpa, two Liebermann experts use important paintings to explain what Max Liebermann (1847-1935) still has to say through his work today.
Find the way to Liebermann? “When you come into Berlin, turn left immediately,” says the painter himself. Next to the Brandenburg Gate is Liebermann’s house, which was destroyed in the war and rebuilt after the fall of the Wall. Because Berlin seemed “dirty and ragged” to him, he had the villa built on Wannsee in 1910. The idyll also served as a substitute for his long-loved trips to Holland, which he discontinued with the outbreak of the First World War.
The Impressionist on the Beach
Lucy Wasensteiner is the director of the Liebermann Villa. From the current exhibition “Coast in Sight!” she chose Liebermann’s “On the Beach at Noordwijk” from 1908. “The pictures are very interesting for us because they are the immediate forerunners of the Wannsee pictures,” says Wasensteiner. “You can clearly see the belief in Impressionism in these pictures.” Where it was even more naturalistic in previous years, delicate pastel strokes now capture the colors and light of the beach landscape.
Liebermann paints the scene several times: on a hot day, then with more freshness and wind. “He takes the easel outside to the beach.” Painting “en plein air” is one of the hallmarks of Impressionism. For Liebermann, in his words, this is not a style, but a “worldview”.
Wasensteiner sees Liebermann “really as a European artist in this phase”, he looks outside, does not only deal with Berlin, goes to Holland, adopts techniques from France. She puts the radiance of these works in relation to later developments such as the First World War, the economic crisis, and National Socialism. The pictures speak for her “an important lesson for today: how quickly it can happen and how you have to be careful”.
Liebermann’s journey took time: the son of a wealthy industrialist in Berlin discovered his interest in art at an early age. He gave up his alibi studies in chemistry in order to deal with landscape painting in Weimar. Everyday scenes, the lives of simple people, he encountered later in Düsseldorf. This subject remains during his first trip to the Netherlands.
Reputation as a “poor man’s painter”
“Die Gänsepluckerinnen” is a groundbreaking result in 1872. The realistic depiction of a rural scene around the processing of living and dead animals gave him a reputation as a “painter of the ugly” and “painter of the poor”. That hardly stops the success. With his pictures, the young artist from a wealthy family brings sceneries of the simplest people into bourgeois living environments. Liebermann prefers “the well-painted turnip to the badly painted Madonna”.
In Paris he seeks his first contact with French Impressionists, in Munich his naturalistic painting “The Twelve-Year-Old Jesus in the Temple” earns him the accusation of being a “deceiver of the Lord”. In 1884 the artist returned to his native town. Here he becomes the head of the Berlin Secession: The movement stands in opposition to the traditional painting school of the Academy, which Liebermann later not only accepts but also makes president.
The painter is also a consultant and collects himself, owning 17 paintings by Edouard Manet alone. The National Gallery in Berlin owes numerous works by French Impressionists, for example, to his tips and contacts.
Many of these stations can be traced in the Old National Gallery, which has 22 paintings by Liebermann in its inventory. For example “The goose pluckers”. Director Ralph Gleis leads past the social reality of the picture to his favorite Liebermann, the “Stevenstift in Leiden” from 1889.
Gleis sees it as “a hinge in his oeuvre”. Two old women at the edge are still shown in a comparatively naturalistic way. Track points to a cage above. “The birds are actually just two small, yellow dabs, he still models them as he draws up the colour.” In the right half of the picture, Liebermann goes over the orderly architecture of a path in the middle to the “chaos of the vegetation” of a garden, “here he lets off steam completely in painting”. “Since he really modeled with the paint, it’s a three-dimensional work of art.” Years later, this technique would determine his well-known works from the garden at Wannsee, where more than 200 pictures of flowers, beds, houses and lakes were created.
For Gleis, Liebermann’s popularity stems from “the fact that he was one of the first Germans to adopt this French style of impressionism”. This important style of art is now consensual. “The painters never dreamed of it back then,” says Gleis. What was once considered revolutionary “is now the greatest feel-good consensus when you look at art”.
He despises the Nazis
Accordingly, the Liebermann anniversary is a topic in many places. A look at the European artist was just shown in Darmstadt and Düsseldorf. On Föhr, the West Coast Art Museum is dedicated to the provenance history of an oil study by Liebermann. Berlin shows “Coast in sight!” in the Liebermann-Villa, at the Brandenburg Gate it is about “Liebermann’s World”, the Old National Gallery has put together a homage with “My Liebermann” with very different views of the artist.
Liebermann, who is always alert, would probably also be concerned with current developments such as anti-Semitism, self-proclaimed lateral thinkers or radicalizing right-wing extremists. When the National Socialists took power in 1933, he found clear words: “I can’t eat as much as I want to throw up.” The Jew Liebermann withdrew into private life until his death in 1935. Eight years later, his wife Martha Liebermann poisoned herself before being deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. (dpa)