Max Liebermann, 'Memorial Service for Kaiser Friedrich at Kösen', 1888-9

We are looking down into a glade in a forest where a memorial service is being held. A group of flagbearers appear to be waiting to walk through a gap in the monumental tree trunks, followed by a choir dressed in white. Max Liebermann used tiny scattered flecks of white paint to suggest the pale sunlight filtering through the trees. But the overall mood is sombre. The palette is muted with dull greens and browns. The sky is almost completely obscured by leaves and branches, and the mourners are dwarfed by the mighty trees.

The scene is set in the Thuringian Forest outside the spa town of Kösen, near Leipzig in south-east Germany. The glade was sometimes used as a sacred place. Liebermann visited the woods early in 1888 and made a number of sketches and studies of the trees there. Soon after, on 15 June 1888, Kaiser Friedrich III of Germany died, aged 56, only 99 days after his coronation. His memorial service was held in the forest. Although Liebermann was not there at the time, he reimagined the scene in order to make this painting.

Marking the demise of a hereditary emperor was an unusual subject for Liebermann. He was a portrait painter who was also known for his pictures of the poor and the dispossessed. But Friedrich had liberal sympathies. He had married the British Queen Victoria’s eldest child (also named Victoria). He was in favour of curtailing the power of the Chancellor, the hardline Otto von Bismarck. Instead, he would introduce a more British-style cabinet government, with ministers responsible for parliament. Friedrich also spoke out against a surge in anti-Semitism in Germany. The sudden death of the emperor was seen as a blow to tolerance and liberal hopes. Liebermann, who was Jewish, seems to have been signalling his sadness at the news.

The composition was also inspired by the Sermon in the Beech Grove near Kösen (Magyar Nemzeti Galéria, Budapest), made in 1868 by the famous Prussian artist Adolph Menzel. He had attended a service in the same woods during a stay in Kösen in 1865. Menzel’s painting depicts a similar but much less subdued scene.

Liebermann was influenced by French painting, first by the artists of the Barbizon School, including Jean-François Millet, Camille Corot and Charles-François Daubigny, and later by those of the Impressionist movement. We can see here signs of that latter influence, particularly in the foliage of the trees and the white flags in the foreground. Liebermann collected Impressionist paintings and wrote essays on Edgar Degas and Edouard Manet.