Ritratto del pittore Lovis Corinth

In 1899 a group of Berlin artists broke away from the official salon and founded the Berlin Secession, with Max Liebermann as its first president. That same year the younger painter Lovis Corinth came to Berlin for the Secession's opening show and called on Liebermann at his studio. During the visit the two men painted each other. This is Liebermann's side of the exchange. Corinth is turned in his chair, his heavy mustache and steady gaze doing most of the work while the body is barely sketched in. Both would become central figures of German painting in the years before the First World War. Liebermann kept the loose, rapid brushwork he had taken from French Impressionism, which you can see in the unfinished-looking jacket.