Max Liebermann, the son of a wealthy Berlin Jewish family, was a dominant figure in the German art world in the late-Imperial- and Weimar periods. He initially painted Dutch peasants in a realist style, then led the antiestablishment naturalist movement in the 1880s and 1890s, and, after 1895, worked for many years in an impressionist style. He was famous for his portraits and his scenes of bourgeois life. Liebermann helped found and served as the president of the progressive Berlin Secession from 1898 to 1910 and was president of the Prussian Academy of Arts from 1920 until Hitler’s rise to power in 1933, when Liebermann was forced to resign his position.
In the interwar period, Liebermann’s portraits were highly sought after by the wealthy. He also produced many self-portraits. This one, painted when he was in his seventies, portrays him as a self…
This Torah curtain was made in Ankara, Turkey. The motifs of a central menorah and hands making the priestly blessing were common in other Ottoman Jewish ritual folk art. Embroidered verses from the…
This woodcut depicts Jewish women and girls lighting candles to mark the beginning of the Sabbath or a holiday. The illustration appears in a Yiddish translation by Shim’on Levi Gintsburg, printed in…