Information on Max Liebermann German, 1847 - 1935 In the City Park, 1915-20 Oil on panel 6 7/8 x 14 3/4 in. Gift of Ernest G. Herman 2005.41
Subject Matter In the middle of this painting of an urban park scene, two women sit on a bench, the younger with a baby in her arms and the older rocking a large pram. At their feet, two small children, a boy and a girl, the latter wearing a straw hat, play with something on the ground. The four children are all dressed or swathed in white. Both women are dressed in black, though the younger wears a white headscarf. Their modest dress suggests that the women are nannies keeping a watchful eye on the children as they chat. In the background to the left, another woman holding a baby walks through the park with a toddler in hand, and to the right, men gather around a newspaper. By using short strokes of thick paint, the artist creates soft, blurred edges throughout. With the exception of the light blue of the toddler’s dress and the white highlights, the palette is limited to browns, blacks, and the green foliage of the trees in the background. The subtly changing shades of the brown on the ground create an effect of light and shadow, while the varying placement of the trees helps to create the illusion of space and depth.
About the Artist Max Liebermann was born in Berlin in 1847 into a prominent Jewish family. His father was a successful fabric manufacturer and merchant. In the 1860s he began painting with a local Berlin artist, and in the late 1860s he enrolled in the art academy in Weimar where he studied with several Belgian and German instructors. In 1871 he traveled to Dusseldorf where he visited the Hungarian painter Mihaly Munkacsy. Seeing Munkacsy’s Lint Makers inspired him to paint Women Plucking Geese. This Realist painting, which depicted hard and brutal labor, established Liebermann as a painter, though some of his critics labeled him an “apostle of ugliness.” Open to foreign influences, Liebermann also traveled to Paris, Barbizon, and the Netherlands. Among others, he was inspired by French realist painters Gustave Courbet and Jean François Millet. Critics frequently raised questions about the themes of his painting, especially that of rural labor, since he came from a very affluent background. However, Liebermann regarded any kind of labor as critical to the life and self-worth of a person, regardless of his station in society.
By the early 1890s, Liebermann was considered a leading German artist. His largely impressionistic style and portrayals of contemporary life in outdoor settings played a role in shaping modern art. He was also an adept portrait artist and excelled in the graphic arts. Between 1898 and 1911, he was president of the Berlin Secession, an art association founded by Berlin artists as an alternative to the conservative state-run Association of Berlin Artists. Liebermann was its first president. From 1920 to 1933, he also served as president of the Prussian Academy of the Arts.
Hitler’s rise to power in 1933 dealt a powerful blow to Liebermann’s success. He was Jewish; he was a political moderate; he was cosmopolitan; and his work represented modernism. To the Nazis, he stood for all that was alien and un-German. During the Third Reich, his artwork was included in the Degenerate Art exhbition of 1937 and later fell into obscurity.
1/2 Max Liebermann In the City Park, 1915-20
About the Artist continued He died in February of 1935, at the age of 87. His funeral was a somber event that only a few friends and colleagues attended. After the end of the war in 1945, his art and his reputation were slowly rehabilitated. In the United States, his work is mainly found in Los Angeles’ Skirball Cultural Center and the Jewish Museum in New York City.
In 2013 Cornelius Gurlitt, a German recluse, captured headlines for his trove of 1200 paintings and drawings by Modernist artists Picasso, Chagall, Matisse, and Liebermann among others, stacked in a messy apartment. Cornelius’ father, Hildebrand Gurlitt, was one of four art dealers allowed under the Nazis to buy and sell Modern or “degenerate” art. Many of the paintings are thought to have belonged to Jewish collectors who were forced to sell their art way below market value as they tried to flee Germany. Gurlitt died in 2014, and the German government is sorting out restitution claims including one for a Liebermann painting, Two Riders on the Beach, to its rightful heirs.
Quotes from the artist These are the much-quoted lines from Liebermann’s essay on Degas in the fourth volume of the journal PAN (1898): “It is the achievement of the Impressionism – led by Manet-- that they were the first to once again approach things without preconceptions. Instead of the rational painting of the Academy with the recipe of local, light, and shadow tones, they tried to mix every tone on their palette just as they saw it and put it down on canvas. Academic doctrine teaches that light is cold, shadow warm; the Impressionists didn’t care about this doctrine and painted light and shadow red, violet, and green where and how they saw it.”
. . . I admit that when I first saw the paintings by the Impressionists twenty-five years ago, I could not make sense of them. One has to learn to see just as one must learn to listen to a movement by Beethoven. . . . (Of course, the unmusical person never learns).”
Strategies for Student Tours Primary Grades (ages 6-8): How many people do you see in the painting? What are they doing? What differences do you see between this scene of a hundred years ago and a city park scene of today? Upper Elementary (ages 9-11): What colors are used? Why do you think the artist chose these colors? What effect do the white areas have? How is the paint applied? Show the motion your hand would make if you were Liebermann painting this picture. Why do you think the painting is so small? Adolescents & Adults: Speak about Liebermann’s being a Jew and a modern painter influenced by French artists and other Europeans and how these factors led to his being censured in Germany. Discuss recent reports about Cornelius Gurlitt and restituted works of art.
Sources Worth Consulting Deshmukh, Marion, Françoise Forster-Hahn, and Barbara Gaehtgens, eds. Max Liebermann and International Modernism: An Artist’s Career from Empire to Third Reich. New York: Berhahn Books, 2011. Gilbert, Barbara C., ed. Max Liebermann: From Realism to Impressionism. With essays by Marion F. Deshmukh, et. al. Skirball Cultural Artist Center. Distributed by University of Washington Press, 2005.
Prepared by Lourdes Cervantes Date Fall 2014
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