By the late 1880s, Max Liebermann (

By the late 1880s, Max Liebermann (1847-1935) was accustomed to being attacked by art critics for the social sympathies he had been displaying for years. His first naturalist paintings from the 1870s, though widely exhibited in Hamburg, Berlin, and Paris, had been criticized for portraying depressing and “inconsequential” scenes of everyday life in rural settings. When such criticisms helped lower the price of his works, the sting was all the greater. This painting, for example, was acquired by Alfred Lichtwark for the Hamburg Art Museum for a mere 1,000 marks in 1889 – after being shown at a Berlin exhibition of plein-air painters in February of that year and at the Paris Universal Exposition that summer. While the men’s close friendship may have eased this exchange, the low price surely disappointed Liebermann nonetheless.