Self-portrait with palette at the easel

Self-Portrait with Palette at the Easel of 1915, held in the Karg Collection, is among the most professionally revealing of Liebermann's self-portraits. Showing himself at work — palette in hand, positioned before the easel — this is a statement about identity, craft, and the continuity of artistic purpose even during the upheaval of wartime. Liebermann at sixty-eight was a significant public figure, and a self-portrait in working mode asserts that his identity resides in the act of painting above all else. Such works belong to a long tradition of the artist-at-work self-portrait stretching back through Velázquez's Las Meninas and Rembrandt's late self-portraits, but Liebermann's version is characteristically unheroic: a painter at his easel, observed candidly, without mythologizing his own labor.

Oil on canvas with the particularly interesting challenge of painting oneself at work — the act of looking in a mirror while holding a palette and simultaneously depicting the scene. Liebermann's handling is assured and economical, with the palette and easel indicated in broader strokes that support the focal precision reserved for his face and hands. The composition emphasizes the instruments of his craft as much as his personal likeness.