Herd of Sheep Under Trees

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.

1890

A first commissioned portrait: Mayor Petersen

Thanks to Alfred Lichtwark, Liebermann received commissions from Hamburg: a pastel, “Kirchenallee in St. Georg”, and his first portrait commission, Mayor Carl Friedrich Petersen, painted in the manner of Frans Hals. The mayor was furious at the naturalism and the apparent carelessness in the rendering of his official robes; Lichtwark, too, thought the portrait a failure.

spring 1891

Great Gold Medal for “Woman with Goats”

In the spring of 1891 the picture won Liebermann the Great Gold Medal at the Munich exhibition, and at the Vienna exhibition in 1894 it received a large gold medal as well.

5 February 1892

The “Group of Eleven” is formed

Eleven independent artists joined forces in Berlin — the basis of the later Berlin Secession, which led the opposition to the conservative academic school. According to Lovis Corinth, soon after its founding Liebermann became the “secret leader of the eleven anarchists”.

1892

Moving into his parents' mansion on Pariser Platz

When his mother's health failed — a few months before her death — Liebermann moved his family into the mansion on Pariser Platz that his father had bought. He kept to a strict routine, working from ten in the morning to six in the evening in his studio on Auguste-Viktoria-Straße, and confessed that he had become a real bourgeois.

1892

The Edvard Munch exhibition scandal in Berlin

The Association of Berlin Artists staged an exhibition of 55 paintings by Munch, but a general assembly voted 120 to 105 to close it, which finally split Anton von Werner's conservatives from Liebermann's modernists. Sixty protesting members of the Association united under his leadership in the “Free Association of Artists”.