LIEBERMANN, MAX (1847-1935)

"Study for Dutch Village Scene With Hanging Laundry" (1889)
Charcoal
32 x 44cm
Signed lower right
*finished oil painting in Busch-Reisinger Collection, Harvard University, USA
*private collection, Sydney
 
Liebermann was Germany's Greatest Impressionist and founder of the Berlin Secession. He was also a famous German Realist and Impressionist painter. He was dedicated to the portrayal of everyday subjects, like laboring women, orphans, or the elderly, that were then considered unworthy of representation in high art. Inspired by rural life in the Netherlands, where he summered each year, with works such as this, Liebermann began to break with the academicism and the realism of the past. He was later the founding and longtime president of the Berlin Secession and increased appreciation of impressionism and postimpressionism in Germany, alongside Max Slevogt & Lovis Corinth (whom we also have an incredible portrait of in the Belle Epoque collection). 
 
This detailed charcoal is a study for the only Liebermann oil painting in the Busch-Reisinger Museum at Harvard University, one of the most esteemed and well known art galleries in America.