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Lot 96 Restituted to the Heirs of Max and Martha Liebermann
The celebrated pioneer of German Impressionism, Max Liebermann (1847-1935) was a central figure in the cultural life of Imperial-era and Weimar Republic Germany. In 1898, he was one of the co-founders of the Berlin Secession and from 1920 to 1932 he was president of the Prussian Academy of Arts. He embodied the artistic and intellectual establishment of those years and was, additionally, one of the most important art collectors of his time. The many walls of his house at the Brandenburg Gate and of his villa on the Wannsee offered space for numerous paintings and pastels by French Impressionists such as Edouard Manet, Edgar Degas and Claude Monet, to name a few. When the Nazis came to power in 1933, Liebermann resigned as honorary president of the Academy. Liebermann died in 1935, survived by his wife Martha, who committed suicide shortly before her deportation to the Theresienstadt camp. Their only child, Käthe Riezler, and her family escaped Germany and emigrated to the U.S.A. in 1938. For a drawing attributed to Rembrandt from Liebermann’s collection, see lot 53.
The celebrated pioneer of German Impressionism, Max Liebermann (1847-1935) was a central figure in the cultural life of Imperial-era and Weimar Republic Germany. In 1898, he was one of the co-founders of the Berlin Secession and from 1920 to 1932 he was president of the Prussian Academy of Arts. He embodied the artistic and intellectual establishment of those years and was, additionally, one of the most important art collectors of his time. The many walls of his house at the Brandenburg Gate and of his villa on the Wannsee offered space for numerous paintings and pastels by French Impressionists such as Edouard Manet, Edgar Degas and Claude Monet, to name a few. When the Nazis came to power in 1933, Liebermann resigned as honorary president of the Academy. Liebermann died in 1935, survived by his wife Martha, who committed suicide shortly before her deportation to the Theresienstadt camp. Their only child, Käthe Riezler, and her family escaped Germany and emigrated to the U.S.A. in 1938. For a drawing attributed to Rembrandt from Liebermann’s collection, see lot 53.
ADOLPH FRIEDRICH ERDMANN VON MENZEL (WROCLAW 1815-1905 BERLIN)
Studies of two heads of women seen from behind
Closed4 July 2023
Price Realised
GBP 11,970
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Specialist note
Not surprisingly, the German Impressionist Liebermann had a special fondness for Adolph Menzel, owning over fifty works by him, mainly drawings (H. Köhle, ‘Liebermann und Menzel’ in Hedinger et al., op. cit., pp. 73-76, and S. Haug and B. Hedinger ibid., nos. SL 119-SL174, ill.). The technique – pastel on dark brown paper – is one often used by the artist (for examples by Menzel, see Claude Keisch and Marie Ursula Riemann-Reyher, eds., Adolph Menzel, 1815-1905. Between Romanticism and Impressionism, cat. exh. Paris, Musée d'Orsay, Paris, Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art, and Berlin, Nationalgalerie im Alten Museum, 1996-1997, nos. 50, 51, ill.).