Self Portrait in Front of Easel

Max Liebermann was born in Berlin on July 20, 1894, the son of an affluent Jewish textile manufacturer. After studing at the Weimar Art Academy, he traveled in 1874 to Paris and Barbizon, specifically to meet with Jean François Millet. It was also at this time that he was deeply impressed by Dutch painting, in particular the work of Frans Hals. Dissatisfied with the results of his work in Paris, he moved to Munich in 1878. In his Munich atelier he produced carefully executed paintings that earned him great success in the Paris Salon. Thereafter, in 1884, he moved to Berlin where he eventually received much deserved recognition. As a realist, Liebermann contributed to changing the conventional style of painting in Germany. As a leading German Impressionist, he was important in goading the German art establishment toward modernity. With the foundation of the Berlin Secession in 1899, he became its first president and a central figure in the politics of art in the country. He and his work helped to promote the emergence of a new intellectual climate, which was mainly sustained by the wealthy, liberal bourgeoisie of the time, many of whom where Jewish. When the Nazis came to power, however, he was forced to step down from his position as President of the Prussian Academy of Arts. Proscribed, he died an embittered man in 1935, in his house on Paris Platz facing the Brandenburg Gate.During his lifetime Liebermann painted many self-portraits. In this example painted in 1913, executed before a mirror, the artist is shown in his smock, turning to his left in front of the easel, which supports the canvas on which he is replicating his image. While his gaze is fixed probingly on the mirror, his raised hand pauses before guiding the brush forward. Beneath his smock, Liebermann, a bourgeois by habit and conviction, is wearing dark suit trousers, a white shirt and tie, and a light-colored vest. After the painting was acquired by the Kunstmuseum in Düsseldorf, in whose collection it remained until the 1930s, one critic wrote: “Liebermann’s most recent self-portrait (1913) is practically blinding in its radiance. The painter stands before his easel, his sharp, vivacious eyes gazing out of the canvas. The work is brilliant in its apprehension of the moment, and in the subtle delicacy of its color, which consists of a few yellowish white surfaces that vary only slightly in tone; the way the bright jacket stands out against the background is in itself an expression of the highest artistry.”