Max Liebermann
Max Liebermann
(1847 – Berlin – 1935)
The Riezler Family, 1930
Oil on canvas, 54.5 x 75.8 cm
Signed lower right M. Liebermann
On the verso with a German customs stamp[1]
Provenance:
Georg Schäfer collection, Schweinfurt;
German private collection.
Exhibited:
Wohnen in Berlin. Berliner Innenräume der Vergangenheit. Gemälde, Handzeichnungen, Druckgraphik, Berlin Museum, September 5 – October 18, 1976, no. 62, repr.
Literature:
Matthias Eberle, Max Liebermann, Werkverzeichnis der Gemälde und Ölstudien, Munich 1995, II, p. 1216, no. 1930/3, repr. p. 1218.
Max Liebermann’s private environment and his domestic life were very close to his heart. He embodied bourgeois values like no other painter of his generation. His family, the house at Wannsee lake, and his studio are recurring themes in his work. He liked to address his wife Martha, his daughter Käthe and his granddaughter Maria as “my ladies”.[2]
In 1925, he began to focus increasingly on domestic scenes, capturing daily life with his family. Sometimes he would include himself in the image, sometimes he would concentrate on “his ladies.” A family portrait featuring his son-in-law Kurt Riezler is a rarity in Liebermann’s oeuvre. Eberle’s catalogue raisonné records only a few family portraits which include Riezler (Eberle no. 1925/35 and the oil sketch no. 1925/36 [fig. 1], Eberle no. 1926/1 and the present study, Eberle no. 1930/3).[3]
In this view of his studio on Pariser Platz Liebermann depicts his daughter, Käthe Riezler (1885-1952), seated on a sofa at the left. Beside her, perched on the sofa arm, is her daughter Maria (1917-95). They are engrossed in conversation. Seated opposite them to the right is Käthe’s husband Kurt Riezler (1882-1955), absorbed in his newspaper. On the walls are framed paintings and sketches. Liebermann did not make the study to explore or develop a larger family portrait but he did go on to produce a large double portrait of his daughter and granddaughter showing them seated in a very similar position. The portrait was first published in 1930 (Eberle no. 1930/4) and dated by Ostwald[4] to that same year. The present study is likely to have been executed shortly before that.
Liebermann’s son-in-law, Kurt Riezler, received a doctorate in Ancient Economic History in 1905. He joined the Foreign Office as a press officer, worked as a legation councilor and was later an envoy. When peace in Europe unraveled in the summer of 1914, he was in the employment of Reichskanzler Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg. In 1915, he married Käthe Liebermann. From 1919 to 1920, he served as head of the office of Germany’s first president, Friedrich Ebert. In 1928, he became an honorary professor and the deputy managing director and chairman of the board of trustees at Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main, a position from which he was dismissed by the Nazis in 1933. In 1938, the Riezler family emigrated to New York.
The sketchy execution and cropping of the composition lend this painting a spontaneous quality, as if the viewer were present in the room. The relaxed atmosphere of the studio – the granddaughter perched on the sofa arm, her father absorbed in his newspaper – is rendered in subtle, subdued tones.
Fig. 1 Max Liebermann, The Artist Sketching in the Company of his Family, 1925, Max Liebermann-Gesellschaft, Berlin (Eberle no. 1925/36)
[1] The stamp either predates March 31, 1937 or was applied after October 1, 1950. We are grateful to the Deutsches Zollmuseum, Hamburg for their help in providing relevant information.
[2] See the exhibition in the Villa Liebermann, Berlin, February 3 – April 22, 2024,
Im Fokus. Martha, Käthe und Maria. Die Frauen der Familie Liebermann: liebermann-villa.de/ausstellungen/frauen-im-fokus/ (accessed 09.10.2025).
[3] See Matthias Eberle, Max Liebermann, Werkverzeichnis der Gemälde und Ölstudien, Munich 1995, II, nos. 1925/35, 1925/36, 1926/1 (all three include Kurt Riezler), nos. 1926/2, 1926/3, 1930/1 and the present painting 1930/3 (includes Riezler).
[4] Hans Ostwald, Das Liebermann-Buch, Berlin 1930, fig. 126, p. 257.