In 1914, Dr. Otto Schneider reported about his visit to Max Liebermann at his Wannsee home in the magazine "Die Dame," the then world's most exclusive illustrated women's magazine published by Ullstein between 1911 and 1943 and regarded as the "leading gazette for fashion issues." Schneider was amazed by the high profile that the painter enjoyed even among cab drivers: "When I told the chauffeur at Wannsee station the address, he smiled and replied proudly: To Professor Liebermann?" (in Die Dame, summer issue, August 1, 1914, issue 21, pp. 2-4). And so the editor rides from Wannsee station along Große Seestraße, past stately mansions on ample plots of land, before turning right into Colomierstraße, actually a little dead-end street, with the painter's villa and garden immediately on the right.

Max Liebermann acquired this expansive plot of land directly on the shores of Wannsee in 1909. In the months that followed, he not only had a prestigious summer residence built, but he also laid out a magnificent garden with flowerbeds, a birch grove, and a jetty, as well as a gardener's house with a flower and vegetable garden facing the Große Seestraße. When designing the flower and vegetable beds, the painter sought advice from the then Berlin Garden Director Albert Brodersen and his friend Alfred Lichtwark, the Director of the Hamburg Kunsthalle. The play of light and shadow in the trees and the vibrant colors of the flowers provided Liebermann with a wealth of motifs for his paintings. After spending the summer months before the First World War on the Dutch North Sea coast, Max Liebermann would concentrate on the surroundings of his studio on Pariser Platz, with the avenues in the 'Tiergarten,' just a few steps from his townhouse, serving him as colorful motifs, just as much as the surroundings of his summer house on Wannsee, the garden and the 'Große Seestraße.'




Our painting shows a long, broad avenue bathed in light, with people in summer attire strolling along and two cars parked or moving in opposite directions. Große Seestraße (today 'Am Großen Wannsee') was a popular day-trip destination for Berliners and led directly past Liebermann's garden. The street offered him an excellent backdrop for his lavish paintings, flooded with light and full of gestural temperament. A contemporary photograph shows the artist with an easel, painting utensils, and onlookers on Colomierstrasse, probably on the corner of Grosse Seestrasse. Liebermann usually painted in the middle of the action, and it seems he had also set up his easel at the curb of the avenue for the present painting. A self-assured attitude like this reflected the character and aspirations of the French plein-air painters who had inspired Liebermann since his stay in Paris in 1874. He immersed himself in the lightness and cheerfulness of their paintings, studying and acquiring them over the years and amassing a considerable collection of Impressionist works in his villa on Pariser Platz.




This is also how the light, pastel coloring emerges here, the light nuances and soft color transitions that the artist turned into a spontaneous image of nature using brush and palette knife. "Große Seestraße am Wannsee" or 'Allee mit Spaziergängern und Automobilen,' as it is officially named in the catalogue raisonné, comes from the exceptional phase of the famous Wannsee pictures, today regarded as a highlight of Liebermann's versatile late work, in which he captured every corner of his magnificent garden and the summertime hustle and bustle on Wannsee, demonstrating his evolution from a great Realist to arguably the most important German Impressionist. [MvL]