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拍品專文
Max Liebermann was born into a wealthy German-Jewish family of textile manufacturers and bankers. He spent much of his early life in Berlin, and travelled extensively in his adulthood. He first went to Paris in 1872, and exhibited at the Salon two years later, at the age of twenty-five. His earliest meaningful exposure to French Impressionism came later, in 1883, when the Fritz Gurlitt Gallery mounted the first exhibition of impressionist art in Berlin. Two years on, Liebermann began attending the weekly salon of Carl and Felicie Bernstein, whose collection of modern French art, assembled under the guidance of Carl's Parisian cousin Charles Ephrussi, was the most significant in Berlin at the time. After Liebermann's father died in 1894, leaving him a sizable inheritance, the painter began to amass his own major collection of Impressionist art, with particular emphasis on the work of Manet.
Beginning in the 1890s, Liebermann was also passionately engaged in the promotion of modern art in Berlin, championing an international perspective and offering staunch resistance to the cultural conservatism of the Wilhelmine government. From 1899 until 1911, he was the president and most innovative voice of the Berlin Secession, which served as an alternative venue for modern art, open to a range of foreign influences.
Liebermann first travelled to Italy in 1893, and returned on a number of occasions, including 1911, following his appointment as honorary president of the Berlin Secession. He arrived in April and spent most of his four-week stay in Rome, where he worked in his sketches for the present work. The present work represents an urban scene on Monte Pincio, one of Rome’s hills, within a park that would, especially on warm evenings such as the one depicted, become a promenade for the city’s elegantly attired, wealthy inhabitants and their horses and carriages.
In contrast to Liebermann's early paintings of the 1880s and 1890s, where motifs were predominantly taken from rural life, his subsequent work was characterised by themes drawn from urban leisure in much the same way as Manet, Monet and Renoir had overturned the hierarchy of subject matter in French painting at the end of the Second Empire. Liebermann thus turned his attention to scenes of elegant bourgeois families strolling through zoos and parks, tennis players, beer gardens, and become the leading proponent of Impressionism in Germany, gaining critical and commercial acclaim early on in his life.
The present work was owned by Paul Cassirer, the influential modern art dealer and publisher, who exhibited it at his gallery in November 1911. Soon after, it was acquired by the prominent businessman and art collector Henry Percy Newman, and remained in the Newman family until the 1980s.
Beginning in the 1890s, Liebermann was also passionately engaged in the promotion of modern art in Berlin, championing an international perspective and offering staunch resistance to the cultural conservatism of the Wilhelmine government. From 1899 until 1911, he was the president and most innovative voice of the Berlin Secession, which served as an alternative venue for modern art, open to a range of foreign influences.
Liebermann first travelled to Italy in 1893, and returned on a number of occasions, including 1911, following his appointment as honorary president of the Berlin Secession. He arrived in April and spent most of his four-week stay in Rome, where he worked in his sketches for the present work. The present work represents an urban scene on Monte Pincio, one of Rome’s hills, within a park that would, especially on warm evenings such as the one depicted, become a promenade for the city’s elegantly attired, wealthy inhabitants and their horses and carriages.
In contrast to Liebermann's early paintings of the 1880s and 1890s, where motifs were predominantly taken from rural life, his subsequent work was characterised by themes drawn from urban leisure in much the same way as Manet, Monet and Renoir had overturned the hierarchy of subject matter in French painting at the end of the Second Empire. Liebermann thus turned his attention to scenes of elegant bourgeois families strolling through zoos and parks, tennis players, beer gardens, and become the leading proponent of Impressionism in Germany, gaining critical and commercial acclaim early on in his life.
The present work was owned by Paul Cassirer, the influential modern art dealer and publisher, who exhibited it at his gallery in November 1911. Soon after, it was acquired by the prominent businessman and art collector Henry Percy Newman, and remained in the Newman family until the 1980s.