Max Liebermann

Private collection, Switzerland;

sale, Bern, Galerie Stuker, 11 May 2000, lot 1258;

with Arturo Cuéllar, Zurich, 2000,

where acquired by Diane A. Nixon

Berliner Bunte Mappe: Originalbeiträge Berliner Künstler und Schriftsteller, Munich 1886, p. 92, reproduced (Idylle. Von Max Liebermann)

This large and well-preserved drawing by the German artist Max Liebermann was executed in 1886 and was probably inspired by an everyday scene that he witnessed in the Dutch village of Laren, where he spent many summer months from 1884 onward. Liebermann depicts a girl standing on a narrow sandy path, alongside a cow that she holds, attached to a lead. While the animal grazes peacefully the girl, with admirable nonchalance, continues to focus on her task at hand - her knitting.

As noted by Drs. Margreet Nouwen in a letter to the previous owner, in which she also confirmed the authenticity of this work, “the motif perfectly encapsulates Liebermann's interests in the 1880s. The girl belongs to a family that could afford a cow for daily milk but not a meadow to graze the animal, so the children let the cow graze on public land. The girl does her duty and uses her spare time to knit a stocking.”¹

Liebermann drew on the motif of the “Knitting Cowherd” several times, with the same composition appearing in at least one painting (fig. 1, see online) and two pastels.² The present work was, however, created at an earlier date, as can be attested to by its inclusion as an illustration in the Berliner Bunte Mappe of 1886 (see Literature).

^1.Letter of 23 December 2000

^2.See M. Eberle, Max Liebermann, Werkverzeichnis der Gemälde und Ölstudien, Munich 1995, vol. I, pp. 332-3, no. 1888/8, reproduced; sale, Berlin, Leo Spik, 5-6 July 1979, lot 156; sale, Munich, Weinmuller, 17-19 March 1965, lot 1587