Self-portrait, standing in three-quarter figure, both hands in trouser pockets (Selbstbildnis, stehend in Dreiviertelfigur, beide Hände in den Hosentaschen)

This is Berlin in 1915, the second year of the war, and the man painting himself is 68 years old. Max Liebermann was by then the grand old man of German art, the long-serving figurehead of the Berlin Secession, the group of independent painters he had helped lead. He worked quickly here, in oil on cardboard, and put himself down as a man of the world: dark suit, upright stance, both hands pushed into his trouser pockets, entirely at ease. The war that was emptying Germany of a generation does not enter the picture. Liebermann was Jewish, and within 20 years the country he had painted all his life would turn on him. He resigned his public offices in 1933 and died in Berlin two years later. This small self-portrait stayed in private hands for almost 100 years and only reached the Alte Nationalgalerie, a few steps from where he lived, in 2014.