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Overview
The leading German 'impressionist' painter and printmaker of his era, Max Liebermann (1847-1935) came from a family of wealthy Jewish manufacturers in Berlin. He rose rapidly to prominence as an artist, being successful throughout his career, to become established as the grand old man of German art. Liebermann's open, naturalistic style was derived primarily from his association with the French Impressionists. He first came into contact with their work while living in Paris from 1873 until 1877 and his personal wealth enabled him to assemble an impressive collection of their work. Despite his relatively reactionary stance in establishing the dissident Group of XI, Max Liebermann was awarded the Gold Medal at the Berlin Salon in 1897, and subsequently made first President of the Berlin Secession upon its foundation in 1899. Much of the success of the Secession is attributed to Liebermann's inspired leadership. In 1920 he was appointed President of the Prussian Akademie der Kunste, finally resigning his honorary status after the Nazis had come to power, just two years before his death.
Although Liebermann made his first etching in 1876, he only began to develop his fervent interest in intaglio printmaking in 1890, when encouraged by the Dutch etcher Jan Vert in the technique of soft-ground etching. After a pause of some four years, he resumed printmaking in 1900, largely abandoning the soft-ground technique in favour of drypoint - as in this print - or occasionally pure etching. It was largely through his influence that Lovis Corinth was persuaded to resume his efforts in printmaking. Liebermann produced over 500 original prints in his lifetime. These freely handled, naturalistic works display the open sense of light which was so essential to all Impressionist art and which was critical to establishing Liebermann's position as the leading artist of this school in Germany.
Liebermann once stated in words that little please feminists of today: 'Samson and Delilah along with the good Samaritan, contains everything that needs to be said about humans... How the Pharisee walks by the suffering man - what some women do to a man.'
Liebermann addressed the theme at least twice in his paintings as well as here. This sparing, rapidly but highly effectively drawn drypoint dates from c. 1910, relatively late in his long career. It depicts two people giving a drink to a man evidently dying in a desert landscape, with a donkey grazing in the background. The print is more usually found in reverse.
See:
Campbell Fine Art, 'Max Liebermann', http://www.campbell-fine-art.com/artists.php?id=190
Marion Deshmukh et al (eds), Max Libermann and International Modernism: An Artist's Career from Empire to Third Reich (2011), p. 157.
Dr Mark Stocker Curator, Historical International Art May 2018