Lot: 204
Max Liebermann
1847 Berlin - 1935 Berlin
Blumenrabatte im Wannseegarten. Wohl 1924.
Pastel.
Signed lower left. On firm creme wove paper. 12,2 x 19 cm (4,8 x 7,4 in), the full sheet.
The work was made as a preliminary to the oil painting "Der Nutzgarten in Wannsee nach Nordwesten" (Eberle 1924/14) from 4 August, 1924.

This work's authenticity has kindly been confirmed by Dr. Margreet Nouwen, Berlin. It will be included into the forthcoming catalogue raisonné of pastels, watercolors and gouaches.

PROVENANCE: Private collection South Germany.

The villa that Max Liebermann had built in 1910 on the shores of Wannsee was surrounded by a park. It would become not just a refuge for the family in the hard times of the first world war. It provided the painter, who was growing too old to take the pleasure he once had in travelling, with a wealth of motifs on a scale that was entirely unexpected. Like Emil Nolde, Max Liebermann discovered the garden around his villa as a treasure trove of motifs. However, unlike Nolde, who made flowers with their intense colors the subject of his pictures, Liebermann viewed his grounds as a total work of art. The lush flower borders, which reveal a rather ostentatious desire for showiness, would become a favourite subject in Liebermann’s paintings and pastels. There he could push the boundaries of his mastery of a sophisticated palette to represent the magnificent flowers in his garden. Even in small formats Liebermann aimed at the effect to be achieved by an encompassing, complete pictorial idiom as exemplified by our work in pastels. [KD].

Colors in very good and fresh condition. Corners minimally scuffed.

EUR: 24.000 - 28.000DIFF.(19%)
US$: 32.736 - 38.192