Studio: international art (18.1900)

IVilhelm Leibl

brought a complete change in Leibl's conception of
art. A grand exhibition of modern French works,
principally of realistic tendency, had been opened
in Munich. One gallery was devoted to Courbet's
paintings. Leibl was enthusiastic : he perceived that
it was possible to approach Nature without imitating
the old masters; and this conscious assertion of
independence made the most profound impression
upon him. When Courbet came to Munich, the
two artists fraternised, without being able to con-
verse, Courbet speaking only French, Leibl only
German. But they understood one another, be-
cause they were aware of the near kinship of
their art. Leibl followed Courbet to Paris, and
stayed there until the outbreak of the war. Some
of his canvases were exhibited in the Salon of
1870.

The paintings executed by Leibl at that time,
during his residence in Paris or immediately after,
will rank among the most perfect productions of
German art in the nineteenth century. Among
them I will mention Die alte Frau mit dem Rosen-
kranz (i86g); Die Cocotte (until lately in the posses-
sion of Mr. Chase, the New York painter); and
(commenced in 1870, but never finished) Die
Tischgesellschaft. All three paintings are in the
possession of Herr Seeger. These pictures are
painted with freedom, grandeur, and power. Their
beautiful tone is the natural consequence of a real
sense of colour. In the painting of the old woman,
for instance, a red shawl, thrown over a chair, is the
only bit of striking local colour; apart from that
we have a combination of black, brown, and grey,
from which rises the wrinkled face, and the withered
old hands, holding a rosary. The Dinner Party
consists of black figures, in the midst of which is
placed a lady dressed in light grey, which thus
becomes the colour centre of the picture. Every-
thing here testifies to artistic discernment born of
highest genius. The Cocotte, in point of artistic
taste, may be compared with the best work of
Terborch. The artist paints without regard to
line and contour, but produces a form of extra-
ordinary reality. He places no value upon careful
finish, but considers his painting finished when he
has fully expressed himself in colour. Occasion-
ally broad strokes of the brush (as in the Dinner
Party) remain unconnected side by side, and the
eye of the beholder combines the great splashes
into the desired form.

How came it that an artist who began in this
manner should have painted, not quite a decade
later, like a German master of the sixteenth cen-
tury, so that he may be compared with Holbein as
166

regards smoothness of execution and scrupulous
exactness of drawing ? Other surroundings, a com-
plete change of atmosphere, and, perhaps too, the
conviction that the real force of German art is
rooted in soil other than that of French art, may
have brought about this radical transformation. If
we compare his Tischgesellschaft with his Frauen in
der Kirche (first exhibited at Vienna in 1882, sub-
sequently in 1883 at Munich and at Georges
Petit's gallery, and now private property in South
Germany), we can scarce believe both to be by the
same hand. The connecting characteristics are
almost completely absent.

When Leibl returned to Germany in 1870, he
could not long remain within the walls of a city.
He fled to Nature, not, as was the case in the last
century, from frivolity or sentimentality, but because
his strenuous being required fresh air to breathe.
He took up his abode in the little Bavarian
villages, in Graselfingen on the Ammersee, in
Barblingen; in 1884 he retired to Aibling, and
when that place became invaded by town dwellers
he escaped into the mountains, chose a peasant's
house as his abode, and there he now lives with
his friend Sperl, the landscape painter, in the
voluntary loneliness which has become a necessary
of life to him.

Those who knew Leibl describe him as a thick-
set man of uncommon bodily strength. He has
the courage to live as it pleases him, his dress and
habits being those of the Tyrolese peasants whose
life and manners have become the subjects of his
art. He is an ardent hunter, and, while he lived
on the Ammersee, often spent days and days in
fishing and rowing. Thus he has lived for years,
and frequently does not touch a brush for months
at a time.

In the contemplation of Nature his eye recovered
its steadiness, and lost everything that was foreign
to his true temperament. Gradually the artist's
broad manner, assumed under the influence of the
French realists, was changed to a clear and careful
surface execution, which developed by degrees into
the most minute finish. It was as if his eye had
undergone a change since he had lived in the open,
far away from the atmosphere of a capital, in the
clear and pure mountain air.

The paintings representing best this stage of
Leibl's art include the following : Dachauer Bauer
innen (1871), two peasant women in their Sunday
dress, sitting together on a bench in an inn; the
life-size Portrait of a Hunter (1874) casting his
eye over the landscape, a work full of animation,
but not altogether happy in its general effect (both