Liebermann Collection

Max Liebermann - painter and art collector (self-portrait, 1916.)

The Liebermann Collection was a private German art collection owned by the painter Max Liebermann . He was one of the most important Berlin art collectors of the Imperial Era and the Weimar Republic. In his endeavors to imitate the big industrialists, bankers and stock market speculators, he furnished his house on Pariser Platz and his Liebermann villa on Wannsee with old, mostly French furniture and tapestries. With his fortune (in 1913 this was 6.1 million marks with an income of 400,000 marks in the same year) he could afford such a lifestyle.

In contrast to most other collectors of his time, he favored the new French painting. During his study visit to Paris in the 1870s, Liebermann was mainly interested in the artists of the Barbizon School . At this time he ignored the new painting of impressionism . It was not until the early 1880s, when he was exhibiting at the same time as Édouard Manet in the Paris Salon, that Liebermann asked Manet to get to know him. A request that Millet - like Millet years earlier - refused for patriotic reasons.

In 1882, the collector couple Carl and Felicie Bernstein first brought works by the French Impressionists to Berlin. In her salon, Liebermann admired the works of Manet, Claude Monet and others. By exchanging for a portrait of Carl Bernstein , Manet's peonies became the first work by this artist in the Liebermann collection in 1892 . It was only after inheriting his father's fortune two years later that Liebermann was able to acquire works by French realists and impressionists, which had meanwhile increased significantly in price. In the following years he acquired 16 paintings and one watercolor from Manet alone. Liebermann was thus one of the early collectors of modern French art in Germany. In addition to Manet's paintings, his collection also included 14 paintings by Honoré Daumier , three paintings by Claude Monet, several oil paintings and pastels by Edgar Degas, and one painting each by Paul Cézanne , Gustave Courbet , Charles-François Daubigny , Pierre-Auguste Renoir , and Théodore Rousseau and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec .

In addition to the French pictures, Liebermann also collected paintings by Adolph Menzel , Fritz von Uhde and Jozef Israëls as well as East Asian art. He had started collecting Japanese woodblock prints during his time in Paris and Barbizon , when Asian art was in vogue, and was able to amass one of the largest collections in Berlin until the 1890s. Among the Japanese works of art were works by Tani Buncho , Toyokuni and Utamaro . After 1900, Liebermann also turned to Chinese art. He acquired Asian woodblock prints well into old age and designed his house with them by hanging them next to Impressionist works.

In his role as a collector, Max Liebermann was also a member of the Kaiser Friedrich Museum Association and the Society for East Asian Art .

Works from the Liebermann Collection (selection)

title	Artist	Originated	Size, material	current collection / owner
Sailing ships and seagulls	Edouard Manet	1864-68	21 × 26 cm, oil on canvas	Privately owned
Women in the race	Edouard Manet	1865	41 × 31 cm, oil on canvas	Cincinnati Art Museum
Equestrian portrait of Mr. Arnaud	Edouard Manet	around 1875	218 × 136 cm, oil on canvas	Civica Galleria d'Arte Moderna in Milan
George Moore in the artist's garden	Edouard Manet	1879	55 × 45 cm, oil on canvas	National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC
Rochefort's escape	Edouard Manet	1880/1881	146 × 116 cm, oil on canvas	Kunsthaus Zurich
Suzanne Manet in the Bellevue garden	Edouard Manet	1880	80.6 × 60.3 cm, oil on canvas	Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York
Young girl in the Bellevue garden	Edouard Manet	1880	65 × 77 cm, oil on canvas	Privately owned
Asparagus bunch	Edouard Manet	around 1880	44 × 54 cm, oil on canvas	Wallraf-Richartz-Museum in Cologne
melon	Edouard Manet	around 1880	46.7 × 56.5 cm, oil on canvas	National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC
Pear basket	Edouard Manet	1880-82	31 × 35.5 cm, oil on canvas	Ashmolean Museum in Oxford
Crystal vase with roses, tulips and lilacs	Edouard Manet	around 1881	54 × 34 cm, oil on canvas	Privately owned
Peonies	Edouard Manet	1882	55 × 42 cm, oil on canvas	Privately owned
Three armors and two helmets	Adolph von Menzel	1866	unknown	Kupferstichkabinett of the National Museums in Berlin
Open pit mine in Königshütte	Adolph von Menzel	1872	22.2 × 30.4 cm, pencil study on paper	Kupferstichkabinett of the National Museums in Berlin
Flowers in the greenhouse	Pierre-Auguste Renoir	1864	130 × 98.4 cm, oil on canvas	Hamburger Kunsthalle
Still life with apples and pears	Gustave Courbet	1871	31.5 × 36.2 cm, oil on canvas	Private collection
River bank at Pontoise	Camille Pissarro	around 1872	43.5 × 65.5 cm, oil on canvas	Art Museum St. Gallen
Dancer frieze	Edgar Degas	1893-1898	70.5 × 201 cm, turpentine	Cleveland Museum of Art
Poppy field	Claude Monet	1875	60 × 81 cm, oil on canvas	Privately owned
Manet paints in Monet's garden in Argenteuil	Claude Monet	1874	Size unknown, oil on canvas	Whereabouts unknown
The jockey	Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec	around 1889	51 × 36 cm, color lithograph	Whereabouts unknown
The painter in front of the easel	Honoré Daumier	1865-1868	33 × 26 cm, oil on panel	Phillips Collection in Washington, DC
Meadow and farmhouse in Jas de Bouffan	Paul Cezanne	1885/87	66 × 81.5 cm, oil on canvas	National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa
Chestnut trees in Jas de Bouffan	Paul Cezanne	1885-1887	73 × 92 cm, oil on canvas	Minneapolis Institute of Arts
Wheat field with cornflowers	Vincent van Gogh	1890	60 × 81 cm, oil on canvas	Privately owned

Individual evidence

↑ Annegret Janda: Max Liebermann's art collection in his letters. In: Natter, Schoeps: Max Liebermann and the Impressionists. 1997, pp. 225-254.
^ Karl-Heinz Janda, Annegret Janda Bux: Max Liebermann as an art collector. The creation of his collection and its contemporary impact. In: State Museums in Berlin. Research and Reports. Vol. 15, 1973, ISSN 0067-6004 , pp. 105-149, here p. 107 f., Doi : 10.2307 / 3880722 .
↑ Margreet Nouwen: The garden in the vanishing point. In: Jenns Eric Howoldt, Uwe M. Schneede (Ed.): In the garden of Max Liebermann. Nicolai, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-89479-180-2 , pp. 20–28, here pp. 25 f., (Catalog for the exhibition, Hamburger Kunsthalle from June 11 to September 26, 2004, Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin from 12 October 2004 to January 9, 2005).

literature

G. Tobias Natter, Julius H. Schoeps (Eds.): Max Liebermann and the French Impressionists. DuMont, Cologne 1997, ISBN 3-7701-4294-2 (book accompanying the exhibition "Max Liebermann. Works 1900-1918" in the Jewish Museum of the City of Vienna, November 7, 1997 to January 18, 1998).
Martin Faass (Ed.): Lost Treasures. Max Liebermann's art collection. Published on behalf of the Max Liebermann Society Berlin. Nicolai, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-89479-839-0 (with a directory of the Liebermann collection compiled by Karl-Heinz and Annegret Janda, revised and supplemented by Monika Tatzkow).
Bärbel Hedinger , Michael Diers , Jürgen Müller (Eds.): Max Liebermann. The art collection. From Rembrandt to Manet. Hirmer, Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-7774-2173-5 .

[1] Annegret Janda: Max Liebermann's art collection in his letters. In: Natter, Schoeps: Max Liebermann and the Impressionists. 1997, pp. 225-254.

[2] Karl-Heinz Janda, Annegret Janda Bux: Max Liebermann as an art collector. The creation of his collection and its contemporary impact. In: State Museums in Berlin. Research and Reports. Vol. 15, 1973, ISSN 0067-6004 , pp. 105-149, here p. 107 f., Doi : 10.2307 / 3880722 .

[3] Margreet Nouwen: The garden in the vanishing point. In: Jenns Eric Howoldt, Uwe M. Schneede (Ed.): In the garden of Max Liebermann. Nicolai, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-89479-180-2 , pp. 20–28, here pp. 25 f., (Catalog for the exhibition, Hamburger Kunsthalle from June 11 to September 26, 2004, Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin from 12 October 2004 to January 9, 2005).