Max Liebermann
(born July 20, 1847, Berlin, Prussia — died Feb. 8, 1935, Berlin, Ger.) German painter and etcher. The realism and simplicity of his first exhibited painting,
Women Plucking Geese (1872), were in striking contrast to the Romantic, idealized art then in vogue. In the summer of 1873 he lived in Barbizon, where he became acquainted with the
Barbizon school of painters; as a result of their influence, he brightened his palette and helped initiate the German school of
Impressionism. In the 1880s he found his subjects in the orphanages and asylums for the old in Amsterdam and among the peasants and urban labourers of Germany and the Netherlands. As a supporter of such academically unpopular styles as Impressionism and
Art Nouveau, he founded the Berlin
Sezession (1899) but later became president of the conservative Berlin Academy.
For more information on Max Liebermann, visit Britannica.com.
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 1994-2012 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved.