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forgotten when you are confronted with such plates as the
self-portraits, the various beer-gardens, the houses on the dunes
(with a hint of the Rembrandt magic), or the bathing boys. His skill
in black and white is best seen when he holds a pencil, charcoal, or
pen in his hand. The lightness, swiftness, elasticity of his line,
the precise effect attained and the clarity of the design prove the
master at his best and unhampered by the slower technical processes of
etching or lithography.

I studied Liebermann's work from Amsterdam to Vienna, and out of the
variety of styles set forth I endeavoured to disentangle several
leading characteristics. The son of a well-known Berlin family, his
father a comfortably situated manufacturer, the young Max was brought
up in an atmosphere of culture and family affection. His love for art
was so pronounced that his father, like the father of Mendelssohn, let
him follow his bent, and at fourteen he was placed under the tutelage
of Steffeck, an old-timer, whose pictures nowadays seem a relic from
some nightmare of art. Steffeck had studied under Schadow, another of
the prehistoric Dinosaurs of Germany, and boasted of it. He once told
Liebermann that Adolf Menzel only made caricatures, not portraits. You
rub your eyes and wonder. Liebermann has said that this rigid training
did him good. But he soon forgot it in actual practice. Some good
angel must have protected him, for he came under the influence of
Munkaczy and, luckily for him, escaped the evil paint of that
overrated mediocrity. But perhaps the Hungarian helped him to build a
bridge between the antique formula of Steffeck and the modern
French--that is, the Impressionists. Max had to burn many bridges
behind him before he formed a style of his own. Individuality is not
always born, it is sometimes made, despite what the copy-books assure
us to the contrary. The wit and irony of the man and painter come both
from Berlin and from his Jewish ancestry. He looks like a benevolent
Mephistopheles, and is kindness personified to young artists.

Subjecting himself to the influence of Courbet, Millet, Rousseau,
Corot, Troyon, he went to Holland, and there fell captive to the
genius of Rembrandt. The mystic in Liebermann is less pronounced than
one might expect. His clear picture of the visible world holds few
secret, haunted spots. I do not altogether believe in his biblical
subjects, in the Samson and Delilah, in the youthful Christ a