Although Max Liebermann (1847-1935) began his career as a realist
painter depicting scenes of rural labor, Dutch village life, and the
countryside, by the turn of the century, his paintings had evolved into
colorful images of bourgeois life and leisure that critics associated
with French impressionism. During a time of increasing German
nationalism, his paintings and cultural politics sparked numerous
aesthetic and political controversies. His eminent career and his
reputation intersected with the dramatic and violent events of modern
German history from the Empire to the Third Reich. The Nazis'
persecution of modern and Jewish artists led to the obliteration of
Liebermann from the narratives of modern art, but this volume
contributes to the recent wave of scholarly literature that works to
recover his role and his oeuvre from an international perspective.