Encouraged by Courbet, influenced by Manet, and esteemed by Van Gogh, Wilhelm Leibl (1844–1900) was among the most important representatives of realism in Europe. His oeuvre revolves around the uncompromisingly authentic portrayal of human beings. With his retreat from the city to the country, Leibl founded a style of modern figural painting in which the truth of nature took priority over the idylls and narrative tendencies of traditional genre painting. Wilhelm Leibl’s guiding principle was not that his models be beautiful, but that they be “well perceived.”

This exhibition, which includes loan works from Germany, Austria, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Switzerland, and the USA, arose in cooperation with the Kunsthaus Zürich.