Picture "Village Street with Passers-By" (circa 1905) (Unique piece) New
Picture "Village Street with Passers-By" (circa 1905) (Unique piece) New
Quick info
unique piece | signed | charcoal on paper | framed | size 35 x 42 cm
Detailed description
Picture "Village Street with Passers-By" (circa 1905) (Unique piece)
Max Liebermann’s drawing "Village Street with Passers-By" captures a moment of everyday life that simultaneously reflects the tension between tradition and modernity. The composition is simple yet full of vibrant dynamism: a rural street leads the eye into the depth of the scene, flanked by houses whose architectural details are captured in precise but loose strokes. This perspective presents the simple life of a village, captured in its elemental movements and forms.
The passers-by, vaguely suggested in the picture, are not portrayed as individual portraits but rather as fleeting snapshots of a busy everyday life. Liebermann skilfully depicts the movement of the figures and their interaction with the environment in a subtle play of light and shadow. The faces and bodies of the people remain shadowy, but it is precisely in this ambiguity that a subtle closeness to the palpable liveliness of the scene emerges.
"Village Street with Passers-By" is an excellent example of Liebermann’s ability to capture the flow of life in simple yet impactful moments. The drawing aligns with the artist's desire to capture the "beauty of the ordinary" and to offer a new perspective on the world of bourgeois life.
Charcoal on paper, around 1905, signed. Dr Margreet Nouwen from the Max Liebermann Archive will include this work in her forthcoming Catalogue raisonné of pastels, watercolours and gouaches. Motif size/sheet size 10.9 x 18 cm. Size in frame 35 x 42 cm as shown.
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About Max Liebermann
1847-1935
Together with Lovis Corinth and Max Slevogt, Max Liebermann formed the triumvirate of German Impressionism and received numerous honours throughout his life. Through his commitment to elevating the life and work of ordinary people to art in unpretentious simplicity meant that Liebermann initially had to fight for recognition.
Liebermann only became a celebrated painter at the turn of the century when he increasingly devoted himself to motifs and scenes from the life of the upper-middle classes. He was an appointed professor at the Royal Academy and a member of the jury at the Academy exhibitions in 1897. In 1899 he founded the Berlin Secession and made it the most important German art institution. In 1920 Liebermann became president of the Prussian Academy and in 1932 its honorary president.
Because of his Jewish ancestry, he was ostracised by the Nazis and forced to resign from all offices. While watching the Nazis celebrate their victory by marching through the Brandenburg Gate from the window of his flat Liebermann supposedly said: "I can't eat as much as I want to vomit." In 1935 he died at the age of 87 after a long illness.
For Max Liebermann, nature was always a man-made (and man-inhabited) paradise. He found his motifs in gardens, parks and in bourgeois places of amusement. Liebermann is a master of staged light, which he lets fall on his scenes, often filtered through a canopy. The individual beams of light that penetrate to the ground are striking and have gone down in art history as "Liebermann's sunspots".
Depiction of typical scenes from daily life in painting, with distinctions between rural, bourgeois, and courtly genres.
The genre reached its peak and immense popularity in Dutch paintings of the 17th century. In the 18th century, especially in France, the courtly and gallant painting became prominent, while in Germany, a more bourgeois character developed.
A one-of-a-kind or unique piece is a work of art personally created by the artist. It exists only once due to the type of production (oil painting, watercolour, drawing, lost-wax sculpture etc.).
In addition to the classic unique pieces, there are also the so-called "serial unique pieces". They present a series of works with the same colour, motif and technique, manually prepared by the same artist. The serial unique pieces are rooted in "serial art", a genre of modern art that aims to create an aesthetic effect through series, repetitions, and variations of the same objects or themes or a system of constant and variable elements or principles.
The historical starting point is considered to be Claude Monet's "Les Meules" (1890/1891), where, for the first time, a series was created that went beyond a mere group of works. The other artists, who addressed to the serial art, include Claude Monet, Piet Mondrian and above all Gerhard Richter.