On the Alster in Hamburg by Max Liebermann, 1910, New Masters Gallery, Dresden State Art Collections (Germany)

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Two red parrots are brawling, while a man reaches up. Not watching two of his charges, he is trying to hang another parrot on its perch up in a tree. Liebermann is widely celebrated as both a forerunner of German Impressionism and as the founder of the influential avant-gardist Berlin Secession. Drawing on the techniques of French Impressionism and the Dutch Hague School, his naturalistic painting departed from the traditional methods and genres of academic German art. Galvanized by the paintings Édouard Manet and Edgar Degas, he began to experiment more and more with light and color on canvas. While his formal approach became secondary to subject matter (as it was for the French masters), Liebermann always remained true to the narrative traditions of German art. Indeed, his art drew upon a wide range of subjects, from the travails of hard manual labor, to the leisure pastimes of bourgeois German society.

The Parrot Man by Max Liebermann, 1902, Museum Folkwang (Essen, Germany)

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