1878
First trip to Italy: Venice and Lenbach
In Venice Liebermann wanted to see works by Carpaccio and Gentile Bellini; there he met a group of Munich painters, Franz von Lenbach among them, and spent three months in their company. He then followed them to Munich, the centre of naturalistic painting in Germany.
c. 1879
Scandal over “The Twelve-Year-Old Jesus”
The painting set off a wave of outrage across the empire: the Augsburger Allgemeine wrote of “the ugliest” Jewish boy imaginable, a Bavarian state deputy denied a Jew the right to depict Jesus this way, and the court preacher Adolf Stoecker carried the antisemitic debate on in Berlin. Colleagues including Wilhelm Leibl and Friedrich August von Kaulbach rallied to his side, yet Liebermann himself painted over the figure of Jesus in response — the overpainting was discovered only in 1993.
1880–1881
Honourable mention at the Paris Salon
For the painting of the Amsterdam old men's home Liebermann became the first German to receive an honourable mention at the Paris Salon, and the Impressionist collector Léon Maître bought several of his works.
1882
Paris Salon of 1882: sales and recognition
“The Shoemaker's Workshop”, finished in Dongen, and “Recreation Time in the Amsterdam Orphanage”, composed in 1881–82 from earlier studies, found a buyer in Jean-Baptiste Faure. The French press hailed Liebermann as an Impressionist, and the collector Ernest Hoschedé wrote to Manet that if Manet had revealed the secrets of the open air, Liebermann had grasped light indoors.
1884
Decides to return to Berlin
Liebermann knew that Berlin would bring fresh conflicts, but he believed the city would sooner or later take its place among the leading art centres: it held an important place on the European art market, and Munich's traditions weighed on him. The family's first home was an apartment at In den Zelten 11, on the northern edge of the Tiergarten.
1889
World's Fair in Paris: Liebermann on the jury
Invited with Gotthardt Kuehl and Karl Köpping to the jury of the exhibition marking the centenary of the French Revolution, he obtained the consent of the Prussian minister Goßler and proposed presenting German painting through Menzel, Leibl, Trübner and von Uhde; the press accused him of serving the idea of revolution, but Menzel took his side. Liebermann received a medal of honour and was admitted to the Société des Beaux-Arts, but declined the Legion of Honour on the Prussian government's recommendation.