Max Liebermann
Max Liebermann was a German painter and printmaker, and one of the leading proponents of Impressionism in Germany and continental Europe. The work we present today, Boulevard of the Parrots, is considered to be a major work of German Impressionism. Through the leaves of the promenade, white islands of light shimmer through to the bright path, where elegant people in summer clothing are out for a stroll past the magnificently colored, exotic birds.
Liebermann was interested in movement and light, but unlike the French Impressionists, he never dissolved the substance of the subjects depicted. As atmospherically light and spontaneously painted as the work appears, Liebermann prepared it just as painstakingly in studies in 1902, which he had made at the zoological gardens in Amsterdam. The balanced composition is based on the artist’s directing the figures into the distance on alternating sides of the pictorial axis formed by the path, whereas he arranged the parrots like a frieze along the main horizontal line of the picture.
Have a great Sunday!