Max Liebermann

Blick auf die Blumenterrasse im Wannseegarten nach Südwesten is a beautiful example of Max Liebermann's depiction of his garden at the Wannsee in Berlin.  The painting captures one of the most atmospheric views of the artist's garden and villa rendered here with a warmly infused light. After commissioning his Wannsee villa in 1909, the artist spent many years painting his garden from various angles, sometimes focusing on the enclosed, cultivated patches of flowers while at other times representing the open expanses (fig. 2). 

The Wannsee villa became Liebermann's beloved summer residence for the last decades of his life and the paintings from this period show his garden in all its glory.  The villa was modelled on country houses the artist saw in Hamburg and when it was completed, Liebermann even referred to his villa and garden as his Klein-Versaille (fig. 3).  The artist took great pride in it and paid special attention to the design and layout of his garden.  In collaboration with his friend, Alfred Lichtwark (director of the Kunsthalle in Hamburg at the time), Liebermann designed his garden following the most avant-garde contemporary garden design concepts and created a haven of colours and floral splendour.  The combination of flower beds, a rose garden and a vegetable garden was a most advanced concept at the time.

The artist's practice of painting en plein air, and his method of exploring the same subject from a variety of viewpoints, demonstrates his status as the most important German post-Impressionist painter (fig. 4).  Liebermann was strongly inspired by the French Impressionists and was one of the pioneering collectors of Impressionist art in Germany.  Like Monet, who never tired of painting his flower garden at Giverny (fig. 1), Liebermann found a constant source of inspiration in his rich Wannsee garden.  Blick auf die Blumenterrasse im Wannseegarten nach Südwesten is an elegantly composed work painted in quick, Impressionistic brushstrokes of green and ochre and punctuated by the jewel-like spots of the red and blue of the flowers on the terrace.

In the present work, the painter vividly captures the intense colours of the flower bed and the atmospheric dappled sunshine in front of the villa.  The application of thick impasto and the use of strong reds, light blues, greens, yellows and whites are testimony to Liebermann's admiration of painters such as Manet, Monet and Van Gogh. Blick auf die Blumenterrasse im Wannseegarten nach Südwesten gives a wonderfully nostalgic insight into the life of Liebermann and is one of the most alluring views of the Wannsee garden in the artist's oeuvre.