(Berlin 1847–1935) Biergarten – Restaurationsgarten, 1900, signed M Liebermann, oil on canvas, 46 x 51.5 cm, framed, (PS)

Photo certificate:
Prof Matthias Eberle, Berlin, 13.8.1995 (copy available)

Literature:
Matthias Eberle, Werkverzeichnis der Gemälde und Ölstudien, Munich 1996, vol. 2, no. 1900/20

Provenance:
Collection Dr. Schwarz, Israel
Habsburg & Feldmann auction, New York, May 1989, no. 15

Max Liebermann’s first painting of beer gardens dates back to the early 1890s. He was fascinated by the sociable outdoor hustle and bustle, and above all by the lightspots produced by the sunlight falling through the trees. Liebermann not only studied the effects of light on the ground, he also rendered them on the guests’ clothing and on the furnishings of the inn garden. For the German impressionist Liebermann, the beer garden represented a link between genre painting and landscape depictions. The painting shows a beer garden in Leiden, a subject to which Liebermann repeatedly returned, spending many summer holidays in Holland. Painted with broad brush-strokes, the four trees divide the work into several vertically arranged spaces, within which the figures, some indistinct, move. The viewer’s eye is drawn through the verticals into the garden of the inn and to the busy area of green on the right, which also attracts the gaze of the visitors to this beer garden themselves. Apart from the red, blue and white used to depict the figures, Max Liebermann limited his colour palette to a few earthy brown and green tones. With the reduced chromaticity and spontaneity of the painting, the artist is able to immediately capture the viewer’s attention.