Portrait August Batschari

Portrait August Batschari of 1918 belongs to Max Liebermann's extensive body of portraiture, a genre he pursued throughout his career alongside his more celebrated subject pictures and landscapes. By 1918 Liebermann was in his early seventies and a major public figure in German art — president of the Berlin Secession and widely recognized as the country's leading Impressionist painter. His late portraits are marked by a directness and economy that contrasts with the more elaborate settings of his earlier formal portraits; the sitter's face and character are the sole concern. August Batschari was a businessman associated with Liebermann's social and cultural circle in Berlin, and the portrait, held by the Westphalian State Museum, documents both the specific individual and the class of cultivated German bourgeoisie that constituted much of Liebermann's social world in the final decades of his career.

Oil on canvas in Liebermann's late portrait manner: assured, relatively loose handling that builds the face through layered, directional strokes rather than smooth blending. The palette is characteristically restrained — warm flesh tones against a neutral or dark ground — focusing all chromatic interest on the sitter's face and hands. Late-period portraits show a quickened, more gestural touch compared to his painstaking early work.