The garden surrounding his country house in Wannsee was for Max Lieberman an important source of inspiration for his painting. Aside from the flower terraces and vegetable beds, Lieberman also painted the birch trees on his lakeside property from a number of perspectives. Thus in 1924 he created several pictures of the birch trees growing in irregular groups on his waterside meadow. A painting from this series — “Landscape (Wannsee)” — has been a part of the museum’s inventory since 1980, a gift from Rose and Friedrich Klein. It depicts a regatta on the Wannsee viewed through trees. Three figures (including two clothed in white, most likely the artist’s daughter and granddaughter) are observing the regatta from the shore.
Max Lieberman probably sold the painting as early as January 1925 to the Paul Cassier art salon in Berlin, where it was in turn acquired by German Jewish department store entrepreneur and art collector Alfred Tietz (1883–1941). In May 1925 the painting was displayed in the exhibition “Privately Owned Painting from Cologne, ca. 1860 to the Present”, organised by the Cologne Art Association. In November 1933 it was put up for auction by the Cologne art house Lempertz but, according to the price report in the art publication “Die Weltkunst”, did not find a bidder. Research to date has been unable to determine the work’s subsequent provenance, to include when it entered the collection of Rose and Friedrich Klein.
Miriam Olivia Merz