AMONG art historians of to-day there is hardly anyone who enjoys a
position comparable to that of Dr. Max J. Friedländer. He is universally
recognized as being probably the greatest living expert, notably, of
course, on the early Netherlandish and German masters; and in normal
times not a day passed on which pictures were not submitted to him for
opinion from all parts of the world. But he is much more than the mere,
if accomplished, expert, worried without respite by people eager for his
verdict on their possessions: the list of his writings-all of them
revealing the outlook of the born historian-makes a truly imposing
series, culminating in his monumental History of Early Netherlandish
Painting issued from 1924 onwards in fourteen substantial volumes. And
for a long time the whole of this ceaseless activity had for its
background Dr. Friedländer's connection with the Berlin Picture Gallery
and Print Room: their marvellous growth during the period in question
owes in fact an enormous debt to the distinguished scholar, whose career
as an official came to an end in 1933, when Dr. Friedländer relinquished
the post as Head of the great Picture Gallery, to which he had been
appointed as Wilhelm von Bode's successor. It is, indeed, the very aroma
of that institution in its best days which pervades the whole activity
of one of the greatest of those who stand to it in the relation of at
once alumnus and creator.
