Max Liebermann (German, 1847–1935) was a painter and printmaker associated with the Impressionist style and best known for his paintings of the Bavarian countryside. While studying landscape painting at the Weimar Academy of Art, Liebermann was inspired by the work of Frans Hals and 17th century Dutch painting. He moved to Munich in 1974, a major arts center at the time, but also traveled to his country villa on the shores of Berlin’s Wannsee Lake and spent his summers in Holland. His early paintings depict rural landscapes and scenes from everyday life in a style that closely follows Realist painters, such as
Gustave Courbet (French, 1819–1887), Jean-Baptiste Corot, and
Jean François Millet (French, 1814–1875), often considered the precursors to the Impressionists. In the 1880s, Liebermann began to depict outdoor cafes, crowds relaxing by the sea, polo matches, and horseback riders. Liebermann was a well-known figure in the Berlin art scene with a reputation for being one of the foremost Impressionist painters in Germany. He founded the Berlin Secessionists in 1899, a group of artists removed from government support, and was appointed president of the Prussian Academy of Art in 1920. He was also a well-known portraitist whose subjects included Albert Einstein, Richard Strauss, and the President of the Weimar Republic, Paul von Hindenburg. Liebermann’s late work focused on the area around his countryside villa in Wannsee. The loose brushwork of work such as
The Garden Bench(1916) and
Wannsee Garden(1928) recalls
Claude Monet’s (French, 1840–1926) paintings of Giverny. His own collection of French Impressionist paintings included the work of masters such as
Paul Cézanne (French, 1839–1906),
Edgar Degas (French, 1834–1917), and Auguste Renoir. Liebermann’s work is currently held in major museums including the National Gallery in London, Musée d''''Orsay in Paris,and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.