Max Liebermann was a leading protagonist of Naturalism and Impressionism in Germany. As President of the “Berlin Secession” from 1899 to 1911, he was a key figure in the artistic life of Berlin around 1900. From that time on he painted numerous portraits of Berlin socialites. Liebermann’s self-portraits constitute a sizeable subset of their own. Always elegantly dressed, either in his studio or before a neutral background as in this case, he poses with the attributes of an artist and a bourgeois disposition. Liebermann is illustrating a tenet of his theory: “The art lies not in the idea, but in the manner of its implementation.”

Once a founding member of dissident artistic groupings (“Vereinigung der XI”, “Berlin Secession” and “Free Secession”), in 1920 Max Liebermann was appointed President of the Academy of Arts in Berlin. In May 1933 he stood down from all his official functions due to the political circumstances and his Jewish origins.