Max Liebermann
Straße in Wannsee, 1921

Alfred Flechtheim and Max Liebermann

Max Liebermann grew up in a wealthy Jewish family in Berlin and was given private painting lessons at an early age. After studying at the Kunstschule in Weimar he worked in Paris and Barbizon. In 1878 Liebermann returned to Deutschland and lived first of all in Munich and later in Berlin. He frequently travelled to Holland. His farming subjects in dark shades were initially derided. In 1879 his history painting ‚Jesus in the Temple’ met with considerable hostility towards him as a Jew. It was later acquired by Alfred Lichtwark for the Hamburger Kunsthalle. Lichtwark also commissioned Liebermann to paint his first portrait. It was not until his works ‚Altmännerhaus in Amsterdam’ of 1881 and ‚Freistunde im Amsterdamer Waisenhaus’ of 1882, in which he added ‘sun spots’ for the first time, that the artist found recognition. Through his beach scenes of 1900 and garden motifs of 1909 he developed a brighter palette of colours. Together with Lovis Corinth and Max Slevogt, Max Liebermann is regarded as an important figure in defining German Impressionism. In his career he received recognition for his work on the one hand, for example through his appointment as president of the Preußische Akademie der Künste, as well as anti-Semitic defamation of his art on the other. Works by Max Liebermann were confiscated from German museums during the ‘Degenerate Art’ campaign in 1937.

Alfred Flechtheim loaned graphic works by Max Liebermann to the first exhibition of the Sonderbund westdeutscher Kunstfreunde und Künstler in 1909 after he had become an honorary member of the association in 1910. Flechtheim included works by the painter in group exhibitions on repeated occasions – landscapes by Liebermann were to be seen at an exhibition entitled  Still Lifes in 1924, for intance. He was, however, not the artist’s main gallery representative. This role was taken by Paul Cassirer and his art salon. After an exhibition in the Leicester Galleries in London Alfred Flechtheim backed the gift of the artist’s last self-portrait, ‚Selbstportrait im Malkittel mit Hut, Pinsel and Palette’, to the Tate Gallery in 1934.