Selbstbildnis im Smoking

In 1927 Max Beckmann was near the top of the German art world, teaching in Frankfurt and showing to real acclaim, and he painted himself the way that success felt: in a black tuxedo, one hand on his hip, a cigarette held low, filling the frame like a man who owns the room. Critics read it at once as a portrait of the modern person, self-possessed and a little hard. The confidence did not last. Within a decade the Nazis branded his work degenerate and pulled it from German museums, and Beckmann left the country in 1937, the day after Hitler gave a speech attacking modern art. Harvard bought this picture in 1941, with its painter in exile and Europe at war.