Max Liebermann

Arthur F. Egner, Newark, New Jersey (President of the Newark Museum Association; his sale: Parke Bernet Galleries, New York, Modern Paintings Mainly By American Artists [...] from the Collection of the Late Arthur F. Egner, 4 May 1945, lot 48)
Private Collection, New York
Thence by descent to the present owner

Matthias Eberle, Max Liebermann, 1847-1935: Werkverzeichnis der Gemälde und Ölstudien, Munich, 1996, vol. II, p. 598, no. 1902/19, catalogued & illustrated

The board is flat and even. Overall this painting is in very good original condition, with beautiful impasto, and is ready to hang. Ultraviolet light reveals some tiny spots of retouching scattered along the extreme left edge addressing frame rubbing, and no other visible retouching. There appears to be a minor old triangular-shaped scuff in the left of the sky (visible in the catalogue illustration), however this could be original to the work. Held in a faded gilt rococo-style frame. Colours: The pigments are richer and more contrasted than the catalogue illustration, especially the skin pigments of the bathers, and the whites are cleaner rather than grey.
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Painted in 1902, the present work is set on the beach in Scheveningen in the Netherlands. Liebermann first visited Scheveningen in 1871, and until the outbreak of World War I he returned to Holland every year. Fascinated with the landscape as well as with the local people, he executed a number of paintings of Dutch fishermen and women going about their everyday tasks, and of children playing on the beach.

Liebermann holidayed in Scheveningen during August and September of 1902, and painted a series of works depicting bathing children and horseriders on the beach in this time (see Eberle nos. 1902/11 to 1902/22). These paintings of bathers focus on the play of the children in the waves. However, Liebermann added a repoussoir figure in the lower left corner of each of the bathing compositions to convey a sense of the depth of the water, and of the distance of the boys to the shoreline. While the other compositions show the local lifeguard as a Rückenfigur in the lower left corner, in the present work Liebermann chose to depict a prawn fisherman toiling away in the surf in the foreground, who is juxtaposed with the figures of the bathing boys leisurely playing in the breaking waves.