1456 - Max Liebermann (1847, Berlin – 1935, ibid.)

Max Liebermann (1847, Berlin – 1935, ibid.) Dunes near Nordwijk—View from the Dune Inward Toward the Land Created in 1908, this work is one of the few pure landscapes in Max Liebermann’s oeuvre. Hancke describes it as “one of his most beautiful landscapes, (...) striking for its rich color.” Liebermann had already painted this subject several times as early as 1906, “yet rarely did the artist elicit such a nuanced and magnificent color palette from the landscape as in this painting; rarely did he place the grandeur and vastness of nature so far above human creation” (quoted in Eberle, p. 726). This landscape also reveals a shift in style, characterized by an extremely broad brushstroke combined with impasto application, and reflects Liebermann’s new experience of light, air, magnificent nature, weather, movement, and space. Beneath a blue sky filled with dynamic clouds, a dune landscape stretches out with meadows and pastures; on the right side of the painting, a herd of small black-and-white cows can be seen. The landscape dissolves into large, blended areas and fields in ochre, green, blue, reddish-brown, and pink tones; even the white of the clouds features luminous ochre-yellow accents. After Scheveningen had become too sophisticated and bustling for him, the Impressionist Max Liebermann discovered the quieter, at that time still largely idyllic, former fishing village of Noordwijk on the South Holland North Sea coast between Katwijk and Zandvoort for himself and his family. From 1905 to 1913, Liebermann traveled to Noordwijk every summer (except in 1910, when he spent his first summer in his newly built villa on the Wannsee). Noordwijk quickly became one of his favorite places and a source of inspiration; he even spent his 60th birthday there in 1907. Dunes, the beach, and the sea became his preferred subjects; Liebermann often painted outdoors—“en plein air”—and varied his subjects according to a wide range of weather conditions and atmospheres. With skillfully swift, loose, broad, and powerful brushstrokes that captured the fleeting nature of the moment and the weather, the Impressionist rendered the landscape. At the same time, he allows the viewer to experience the freshness of the North Sea’s atmosphere in a way that is almost sensually tangible. The innovative and spirited nature of Liebermann’s Noordwijk paintings was immediately recognized. Karl Scheffler devoted a lengthy section to them in his essay “New Works by Max Liebermann” in the journal *Kunst und Künstler* (Vol. 5/1909, pp. 191–200). There he writes: “They are so distinctive that every viewer is likely to first recall their own summer joys on the seashore (...) He did not merely depict the beach at Noordwijk in a good or bad way, but rather captured the feeling familiar to all—the sensation left behind by the sea and the shore as they lie bathed in full light. It is the sea air in these paintings that no one who has ever breathed it while looking at them will ever forget; one hears the roar of the eternal surf, is dazzled by the sun lying brightly on the sand, and feels the fresh, damp wind pressing in from all sides. The sea is there, even if it has not been painted (...) Above all the randomness (...) there always lies something grand and enduring (...) the essence is the surging of movement and light (...) Whereas Liebermann used to paint the study first and then the painting in the studio—in the process of which much of the freshness of the impression was always lost—he now composes directly from nature, and the fluid sketch itself becomes the painting. In this fact, one can see a decisive advance and enhancement of his imaginative power. The brushwork in these new seashore paintings therefore possesses such a confident, personal touch, (...) that the interplay with the medium, executed with true painterly passion, already affords aesthetic pleasure, and that one can already sense the master’s hand in the ornamental sweep even when glimpsing just a corner of the painting without knowing the whole.” The works from Noordwijk, which form the crowning achievement of Liebermann’s Holland paintings, are considered—both chronologically and stylistically—to be direct precursors to his magnificent late work: the vibrantly colored Wannsee garden paintings. The war brought an abrupt end to Liebermann’s annual trips to Holland—from 1914 onward, he spent the summer months with his family at the Wannsee. Oil on canvas; signed and dated in the lower right corner. (19)08. 60 cm x 80 cm. Framed. Lit./Catalog: Gustav Pauli: “Max Liebermann,” Stuttgart and Leipzig 1911, ill. p. 203, p. 253; Erich Hancke: “Max Liebermann. His Life and Works,” Berlin 1914, pp. 470, 543 (catalog of works), ill. p. 471; Holly Prentis Richardson: “Landscape in the Work of Max Liebermann,” Vol. II, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1991, p. 176, no. 496; Matthias Eberle: “Max Liebermann 1847–1935. Catalog Raisonné of Paintings and Oil Studies,” Vol. II 1900–1935, Munich 1996, pp. 726ff., no. 1908/13 with ill. Exhibitions: “Exhibition of German Painting of the 19th and 20th Centuries”