Max Liebermann: 6 works

'Women Plucking Geese was the first work that the 25-year-old Liebermann exhibited, and it was not received well, being mocked for its "poor" subject matter and dark coloration. However, it did find a buyer in the railway millionaire Bethel Strousberg, and with the money it earned him Liebermann travelled to Paris where he had his first sight of paintings by Millet and Courbet.'

'When he relocated from Munich to Berlin in 1884, he gifted "Potato Harvest" to his painter friend Johannes Sperl. Presumably it would have been difficult for Liebermann to find a buyer as his realistic depiction of the effort of harvesting presented against the backdrop of realistic countryside did not at first meet with much love in Germany.'

'Liebermann spent the summer of 1876 in Holland. In Haarlem he copied paintings and details from paintings by Frans Hals, mainly his late works such as the Women Regents of the Old Men's Alms House in Haarlem.'

'He also absorbed the lessons of French painters; his richly worked execution of this painting reflects the painterly style he learned in Paris in the 1870s. The Old Woman with Cat was painted in 1878 in Venice, where Liebermann went to recuperate after breaking his leg.'

'Max Liebermann was a renowned German painter and an early adherent to Impressionism in Germany. He was trained at, named to, and later became the president of the Prussian Academy of Arts in Berlin.'

'The Flax Barn at Laren is one of Liebermann's main works among his large-scale paintings of groups of people and workers from the 1880s. At the time, Holland was an important destination for Liebermann and his contemporaries.'