I
The importance of Max Liebermann in any critical consideration of
modern German art is prime. Meister Max, no longer as active as he
was, for he was born in 1847, is still a name to conjure with not only
in Berlin, his birthplace and present home, but in all Germany, and,
for that matter, the wide world. He is intensely national. He is a
Hebrew, and proud of his origin. He is also cosmopolitan. In a word,
he is versatile.
Some years ago, through the enthusiasm and enterprise of the late Hugo
Reisinger and several other art lovers, New York had an opportunity of
enjoying a peep at German paintings in the Metropolitan Museum. It was
rather a disappointing exhibition, principally because the men shown
were not represented at their best. Lenbach was not, nor Boecklin, nor
a dozen others, though Menzel was. That is, we admired one of Menzel's
least characteristic efforts but his most brilliant of canvases, the
stage of the Theatre Gymnase, Paris. Never before nor since that
pictorial performance did the wonderful Kobold of German art attain
such mellowness. Just as he had been under the influence of Courbet
when he painted his big iron forge picture--which, with the French
theatre subject, hangs in the National Gallery, Berlin--so he felt in
the latter the impact of the new Impressionistic school with its
devotion to pure colour, air, and rhythm. Max Liebermann was best seen
in his Flax Spinners of Laren, an early work, Dutch in spirit and
execution, and not without traces of the influence of his friend Josef
Israels. But of the real Liebermann, his scope, originality,
versatility, America, I think, has not yet had an adequate idea.
Versatility is commonly regarded as an indication of superficiality.
How, asks Mr. Worldly Wiseman, can that fellow Admirable Crichton do
so many things so well when it takes all my time to do one thing
badly? Therefore he must be regarded suspiciously. Now, there are no
short cuts in the domain of the arts; Gradus ad Parnassum is always
steep. But, given by nature a certain kind of temperament in which
curiosity is doubled by mental energy, and you may achieve
versatility. Versatility is often mainly an affair of energy, of
prolonged industry. The majority of artists do one thing well, and for
the remainder of their career repeat themselves. When Flaubert wrote
Madame Bovary his admirers demanded a replica and were disappointed
with Salammbo, with Sentimental Education, above all, with The
Temptation of St. Anthony and Bouvard and Pecuchet. Being a creative
genius, Flaubert taught himself to be versatile. Only through
self-discipline, did he achieve his scheme, beside which the writing
of the Human Comedy cannot be compared. There is more thought-stuff
packed in his five masterpieces, apart from the supreme art, than in
whole libraries: quality triumphing over quantity.
Greatly endowed by nature, by reason of his racial origin, and because
of his liberal education, Liebermann was bound to become a versatile
artist. That doesn't mean he is a perfectionist in many things, that
he etches as well as he paints, that he composes as well as he draws.
As a matter of fact he is not as accomplished a master of the medium
as is Anders Zorn; many a smaller man, artistically speaking, handles
the needle with more deftness than Liebermann. But as a general
impression counts as much as technique, your little etcher is soon
forgotten when you are confronted with such plates as the
self-portraits, the various beer-gardens, the houses on the dunes
(with a hint of the Rembrandt magic), or the bathing boys. His skill
in black and white is best seen when he holds a pencil, charcoal, or
pen in his hand. The lightness, swiftness, elasticity of his line,
the precise effect attained and the clarity of the design prove the
master at his best and unhampered by the slower technical processes of
etching or lithography.
I studied Liebermann's work from Amsterdam to Vienna, and out of the
variety of styles set forth I endeavoured to disentangle several
leading characteristics. The son of a well-known Berlin family, his
father a comfortably situated manufacturer, the young Max was brought
up in an atmosphere of culture and family affection. His love for art
was so pronounced that his father, like the father of Mendelssohn, let
him follow his bent, and at fourteen he was placed under the tutelage
of Steffeck, an old-timer, whose pictures nowadays seem a relic from
some nightmare of art. Steffeck had studied under Schadow, another of
the prehistoric Dinosaurs of Germany, and boasted of it. He once told
Liebermann that Adolf Menzel only made caricatures, not portraits. You
rub your eyes and wonder. Liebermann has said that this rigid training
did him good. But he soon forgot it in actual practice. Some good
angel must have protected him, for he came under the influence of
Munkaczy and, luckily for him, escaped the evil paint of that
overrated mediocrity. But perhaps the Hungarian helped him to build a
bridge between the antique formula of Steffeck and the modern
French--that is, the Impressionists. Max had to burn many bridges
behind him before he formed a style of his own. Individuality is not
always born, it is sometimes made, despite what the copy-books assure
us to the contrary. The wit and irony of the man and painter come both
from Berlin and from his Jewish ancestry. He looks like a benevolent
Mephistopheles, and is kindness personified to young artists.
Subjecting himself to the influence of Courbet, Millet, Rousseau,
Corot, Troyon, he went to Holland, and there fell captive to the
genius of Rembrandt. The mystic in Liebermann is less pronounced than
one might expect. His clear picture of the visible world holds few
secret, haunted spots. I do not altogether believe in his biblical
subjects, in the Samson and Delilah, in the youthful Christ and the
Doctors of the Law--the latter is of more interest than the
former--they strike one as academic exercises. Nevertheless, the
lion's paw of Rembrandt left its impress upon his art. The profounder
note which the French painters sometimes miss is not missing in
Liebermann. He has avoided both the pomp and rhetoric of the academic
school and the sentimentality of the latter-day Germans. Liebermann is
never sentimental, though pity for the suffering of life is easily
detected in his canvases, particularly in his Old Men's Home, The
Orphans, The Widower, and a dozen masterpieces of the sort.
In Frans Hals Liebermann found a congenial spirit and made many copies
of his pictures to train his hand and eye. His portraits reveal the
broad brush work of Hals. They are also psychological documents.
Associated with Josef Israels, he was in sympathy with him, but never
as sentimental as the Dutchman. Both reverenced Rembrandt and
interpreted him, each after his own temperament. When Liebermann first
knew Manet, Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, and Degas (particularly Degas) he
had experimented in every key. Master of his materials, master of
himself, a cultured man of the world and a sincere artist, the French
group showed him the way to liberty, to a deliverance from the ruddy
tones of Munich, from the dulness of Duesseldorf, from the bitter
angularities of German draughtsmanship and its naivete which is
supposed to stand for innocence of spirit--really the reverse, a
complete poverty of spirit--and with it all the romantic mythology of
German art, the bloated fighting fauns, leering satyrs, frogmen,
fishwomen, monkeys, and fairies, imps, dryads, and nymphs. Liebermann
discovered the glories of light, of spacing, of pure colour, and
comprehended the various combinations by which tonalities could be
dissociated and synthesised anew. He went back to Germany a painter of
the first rank and an ardent colourist, and he must have felt lonely
there--there were no others like him. Menzel was a master draughtsman,
Leibl an admirable delineator of character, and to name these three is
to name all. Henceforward, Liebermann's life task was to correlate his
cosmopolitan art with German spirit, and he has nobly succeeded.
To-day he is still the commanding figure in German art. No one can
compete with him in maestria, in range, or as a colourist. And at last
I have reached the goal of my discourse.