Free Period in the Amsterdam Orphanage

Max Liebermann built this picture slowly. In the summer of 1876 he had sat in the courtyard of an orphanage on the Kalverstraat in Amsterdam, making studies of the girls at their sewing and games, and only years later, in the winter of 1881 into 1882, did he work them up into this canvas in his Munich studio. The scene is plain daily life, girls in the courtyard, patches of sunlight dropping through the branches onto brick and cloth. Liebermann was among the German painters turning away from grand historical subjects toward ordinary Dutch working people, which struck some critics at home as drab. He sent it to the Paris Salon of 1882, where the French opera singer Jean-Baptiste Faure bought it.