nd the
Doctors of the Law--the latter is of more interest than the
former--they strike one as academic exercises. Nevertheless, the
lion's paw of Rembrandt left its impress upon his art. The profounder
note which the French painters sometimes miss is not missing in
Liebermann. He has avoided both the pomp and rhetoric of the academic
school and the sentimentality of the latter-day Germans. Liebermann is
never sentimental, though pity for the suffering of life is easily
detected in his canvases, particularly in his Old Men's Home, The
Orphans, The Widower, and a dozen masterpieces of the sort.

In Frans Hals Liebermann found a congenial spirit and made many copies
of his pictures to train his hand and eye. His portraits reveal the
broad brush work of Hals. They are also psychological documents.
Associated with Josef Israels, he was in sympathy with him, but never
as sentimental as the Dutchman. Both reverenced Rembrandt and
interpreted him, each after his own temperament. When Liebermann first
knew Manet, Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, and Degas (particularly Degas) he
had experimented in every key. Master of his materials, master of
himself, a cultured man of the world and a sincere artist, the French
group showed him the way to liberty, to a deliverance from the ruddy
tones of Munich, from the dulness of Duesseldorf, from the bitter
angularities of German draughtsmanship and its naivete which is
supposed to stand for innocence of spirit--really the reverse, a
complete poverty of spirit--and with it all the romantic mythology of
German art, the bloated fighting fauns, leering satyrs, frogmen,
fishwomen, monkeys, and fairies, imps, dryads, and nymphs. Liebermann
discovered the glories of light, of spacing, of pure colour, and
comprehended the various combinations by which tonalities could be
dissociated and synthesised anew. He went back to Germany a painter of
the first rank and an ardent colourist, and he must have felt lonely
there--there were no others like him. Menzel was a master draughtsman,
Leibl an admirable delineator of character, and to name these three is
to name all. Henceforward, Liebermann's life task was to correlate his
cosmopolitan art with German spirit, and he has nobly succeeded.
To-day he is still the commanding figure in German art. No one can
compete with him in maestria, in range, or as a colourist. And at last
I have reached the goal of my discourse.

II

A vis