Max Liebermann - Kind unter Bäumen - Studie zu den "Spielenden Kindern" - image-1

Lot 28 Dα

Max Liebermann - Kind unter Bäumen - Studie zu den "Spielenden Kindern"

Auction 1155 - overview Cologne
19.06.2020, 18:00 - Modern and Contemporary Art - Evening Sale
Estimate: 40.000 € - 50.000 €
Result: 55.000 € (incl. premium)

Max Liebermann

Kind unter Bäumen - Studie zu den "Spielenden Kindern"
1882

Oil on paper, mounted on wooden panel 26.9 x 16.4 cm Framed. Signed 'MLiebermann' in India ink lower left. - Verso numbered "2487" on an old paper label.

“Kind unter Bäumen” is the study for the central figure of Max Liebermann's larger painting “Spielende Kinder” (Eberle 1882/10), which was created in the village of Zweelo and is also dated to 1882. The children are shown in a small area of a garden planted with young fruit trees, where they are playing a game in which one player is supposed to catch the player who fails to reach safety by touching a tree after the German equivalent of “Tiggy tiggy touch wood” is called. Our child is thus depicted in the moment of waiting to be told to switch to a new tree. In the large composition created afterwards, the child only forms a small element within a scene depicting the world of work and children's play - with figures, such as the woman drying laundry, who would also subsequently be developed into individual motifs themselves, in the bleaching of the laundry, for example.
For the artist from Berlin, Holland became his artistic adoptive home because, as explained by Margreet Nouwen, he had already fallen for the works of Rembrandt, Frans Hals and Vermeer early on (in: exhib. cat., Max Liebermann. Der Realist und die Phantasie, Hamburg/Frankfurt.M./Leipzig1997/1998, pp.11 ff.). From the early 1870s and for a period of around 40 years, Max Liebermann spent his summer months in the Netherlands, devoting his attention in his paintings primarily to the rural population at work, the inhabitants of Beguine houses, orphanages and men's asylums before occupying himself in later years with the relatively fashionable life at the beaches of the Dutch coast. “In 1882 the German painter Helmuth Liesegang came across Liebermann in Zweelo, a small village in the province of Drenthe. It had been a rainy summer and Liebermann was walking around in wooden shoes and a blue smock, which is why Liesegang […] mistook him for a cattle trader.” Incidentally, van Gogh attempted to meet Liebermann in Zweelo and painted, as he reported to his brother Theo, the same field of fruit trees (Birte Frenssen, in: exhib. cat., Hamburg/Frankfurt.M./Leipzig1997/1998, op. cit., p. 178).
Compared to the figures of the “Spielende Kinder” in Zweelo, who are positioned within a larger compositional framework, the preparatory study “Kind unter Bäumen” focuses in detail on the psychological element, the depicted figure's state of mind. The hesitant and absorbed aspect - within which the child's developing awareness and transformation into a girl or, alternatively, a young woman, may be taking place - as well as the contrast between the black, official-looking clothing and the chubby-cheeked, childish features make this little portrait a particularly delightful study from the early Dutch phase in Max Liebermann's work.

Catalogue Raisonné

Eberle 1882/7

Provenance

Rudolf Lepke, Berlin 1908, Auktion 1514, 5 May 1908, cat. no. 133 ("Mädchen an einen Baum gelehnt"); M. Goldschmidt, Frankfurt/Main 1911; Private collection, Berlin; Kunstkreis Berlin GbR; Private collection, South Germany

Literature

Der Kunstmarkt, no. 33, 22 May 1908, p. 247; Gustav Pauli, Max Liebermann, des Meisters Gemälde in 304 Abbildungen, Stuttgart/Leipzig 1911, p. 244, p. 254, annot. to p. 53, ; Katrin Boskamp, Studien zum Frühwerk von Max Liebermann mit einem Verzeichnis der Gemälde und Ölstudien von 1866-1889, Hildesheim/Zurich/New York 1994, cat. E 43

Exhibitions

Düsseldorf 1988 (Galerie Ludorff), cat p. 164 with colour illus.; Düsseldorf 1992 (Galerie Ludorff), cat. p. 12 with colour illus.; Cannes 1996 (La Malmaison), Max Liebermann, cat. p. 14 with colour illus.; Rüsselsheim 1999 (Opel-Villen), Max Liebermann. Stationen eines Malerlebens, cat. p. 38 with colour illus.; Dessau 2000 (Orangerie des Georgiums), Max Liebermann, cat. p. 12 with colour illus.; Wernigerode 2001 (Schloß Wernigerode), Licht. Phantasie und Charakter - Max Liebermann, cat. p. 28 with colour illus.; Schwäbisch Hall/Wuppertal 2004 (Kunsthalle Würth/Von der Heydt-Museum), Max Liebermann. Poesie des einfachen Lebens, cat. p. 70 with colour illus. (frame label verso)