he note of the ballroom
supper in the munching eagerness of the eaters, but seen in
juxtaposition with the physical force and effort of the workers it
ceases to be revolting, and seems to symbolize the lusty joy of living
with a sympathetic zest of realization.

In all of Menzel's work we have this sense of physical and mental
competency. It shows nothing of the abnormal or decadent, and it must
also be admitted that only in a few instances does it show anything of
esthetic beauty. He was able to paint crowds of people and he managed to
get a remarkable unity of effect in spite of his devotion to detail, but
his masses of light and shade are not held in that noble harmonious
relation achieved by the peasant Millet who was Menzel's contemporary,
his lines have no rhythmic flow, his color, though often charming, is
seldom held together in a unified tone. Some one has called him "the
conscience of German painting," but he is more than that. He is both
conscience and brain. It is always possible to obtain an intellectual
satisfaction from his point of view. What is lacking is emotion.

We feel this lack in other Berlin masters. Professor Max Liebermann is
one of the most distinguished of the modern group, and his large, cool,
definite art is innocent of the moving quality. He was represented in
the exhibition by a portrait of Dr. Bode, a vigorous little composition
called "The Polo-players," the "Flax Barn at Laren," and "The Lace
Maker." The last two were especially typical of his steady detachment
from his subject. The old lace maker, bending over her bobbins, suggests
only absorption in her task. There is no ennobling of her form, no
idealizing of her features, no enveloping of her occupation with
sentiment, nothing but the direct statement of her personality which is
neither subtle nor complex and the description of what she is doing. But
she is intensely real, more real, even, than Menzel's closely observed
individuals. Liebermann, born in 1847, was the leader of the new
tendency characterizing the Germany of the seventies, the tendency
toward constant reference to nature as opposed to the old-fashioned
conventionalism and Academic methods. There could have been no safer
leader for a band of rebels since he was the sanest of thinkers and
worked out a style in which the classic qualities of nobility in the
disposition of lines and spaces and remarkable purity of form played a
prominent part.

[Illustration: Courtesy