Max Liebermann (1847-1935)

Born in Berlin in 1847, Liebermann was the son of a successful businessman whose wealth was such that the future painter never had to work for a living. Yet, like his exact contemproary, the equally wealthy impressionist painter Gustave Caillebotte, Liebermann did not let his comfortable income prevent him from working hard throughout his life. In fact he made a good deal of money in his own right as a successful artist. Like many young men of his class, he trained initially in the law and philosophy, while taking painting lessons in Berlin and before commencing the serious study of art in Weimar in 1868. As an art student, he was deeply affected by Hungarian realist painter Mihály Munkácsy, whose early work served as a major impetus for Liebermann's own.

During the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71), Liebermann served in the Prussian army as a medic and, with his very good training in languages and fluent French, was among the few Germans who went to France after its defeat, spending time in both Paris and the famous village of Barbizon, where, because of his German origins, he was famously refused a meeting with Jean-Francois Millet, the patriotic dean of the French painters village. Liebermann's success as an artist was assured by the brilliant--if controversial--exhibition of his first major painting, Women Plucking Geese, in Berlin in 1872. His choice of a rural subject quickly allied his art with the French mid-century avant-garde tradition of the so-called Barbizon School and demonstrated his knowledge of international painting trends, particularly that of Munkácsy. At the time of its exhibition, critics noted the vulgarity of the subject and the relative crudeness of the painting's execution, thereby identifying Liebermann as a German member of the French-based (thus "foreign") European avant-garde. Yet, on arriving in Paris after the Franco-Prussian War, Liebermann immediately realized the emerging importance of the new urban naturalism practiced by Edouard Manet and his young followers, the future impressionists, and he vowed to learn from these younger avant-gardistes.

During the mid-1870s, when Liebermann was based in Paris, and continuing through the 1880s, he spent his summer months in the Netherlands, sometimes in Amsterdam, where he became fascinated with the traditional Jewish area of the city, which had been important art historically since Rembrandt van Rijn painted there in the seventeenth century. He also spent a good deal of time in the small villages around Laren, east of the capital, where he carefully observed the working methods, costumes, and customs of the local rural workers. In addition, he made several trips to Haarlem to see the work of his pictorial hero, Frans Hals.

Richard R. Brettell, "A Liebermann for Dallas, Max Liebermann's Swimmers," in Impressionism and Post-Impressionism at the Dallas Museum of Art, ed. Heather MacDonald (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013), 37-47.

265933470: UMO. [Caption] Max Liebermann in 1904. Source: Jacob Hilsdorf, Wikimedia Commons, accessed July 18, 2016. 

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