The day before yesterday we had 30°C in Berlin, today 25°. It is sizzling hot, and the Sightseeing boats on the Spree are sparsely used.
Well: who will be in the mood to sit on the upper deck of a steamer for hours in these dog days of summer and let themselves be sprinkled by the stream of words of a tourist guide?
No, I know something much more refreshing.
In the Liebermann-Villa at the Wannsee there is a special exhibition till the 15th August: “Max Liebermann At the Sea”.
Since 1872 Liebermann visited each year the Dutch North Sea Coast at Scheveningen, Noordwijk, Katvijk and Zandvoort.
I think it interesting that he painted for 20 years the life of the common farmers, but never the sea.
At the end of the 1890s the influence of the French Impressionists becomes noticeable: now Liebermann sees the Dutch landscape in a different light, he paints more out of the moment and uses much brighter colours.
He possessed a wonderful collection of modern French painters, and advised the new director of the Berlin National Gallery Hugo von Tschudi at the acquisitions of paintings – 1896 they travelled together to Paris and they bought Manet’s “Winter Garden”.
“At the Dutch seaside the change from Realist to Germany’s most important Impressionist was fulfilled“ they say at the exhibition.
He painted the famous Beach scenes and discovered the open-air painting, fascinated by the play of light.
This picture of the Bathing Boys is seen as the first real beach painting by Max Liebermann. 1875 he had painted that motif before, but there as a Naturalist – after twenty years he discovers it anew, painted the sea and created from 1899 ten pictures of bathing boys.
But nevertheless I prefer pictures like these:
By the beginning of World War I in 1914 the visits in the Netherlands end.
Here is a link for a short tour through the exhibition (in German) bei German TV ZDF: http://www.zdf.de/ZDFmediathek/beitrag/video/1313490/Liebermann-Ausstellung-zum-Meer-eroeffnet
