Max Liebermann came from a family of rich Jewish merchants. His father intended him to read philosophy, but he decided instead to study art in Berlin under Karl Steffeck, before going on in 1868 to Weimar to the School of Fine Arts, then considered the stronghold of avant-garde tendencies in art. He was taught painting there by Paul Thumann and Ferdinand Pauwels. After visiting Paris and then Holland, he went to Dusseldorf where he came across the work of the Hungarian artist Munkacsy. In his painting The Goose Pluckers (1871), which Bonnat admired so much in the 1874 Paris Salon but which had previously
been the subject of scandal in Germany, when the artist was accused of being 'the apostle of ugliness', Liebermann adopted Munkacsy's sombre realistic manner. He then went to Paris (1873, 1878) and Barbizon, where he met Millet, Daubigny and Corot; then to Holland (1875) where he made a special study Frans Hals, and to Munich (1878) before finally settling in Berlin in 1884. Gradually he became interested in open-air painting, and although he did not attempt to use prismatic colours, he did experiment up to a point with divisionism. The painters he admired the most were Manet and Degas. Following their example, and also possibly influenced to a certain extent by Joseph Israels whom he had met in  Holland, Liebermann began from 1890 onwards to choose subjects that gave him an opportunity to study light and render movement  in painting. He continued, however, to paint rustic scenes.
In other paintings of polo grounds orrace-courses, not unlike Degas, Liebermannexcels in the rendering of form in action,skilfully painted in his rapid nervous mannerHis many portraits, mostly painted in thelast thirty years of his life show his objectivityof approach and prove him to be a true representativeof the Berlin tradition. Although Liebermann remainedfirmly set in the tradition of Menzel,he also played a considerable part in the evolution of German painting in the second half ofthe nineteenth century. He prepared the way for other European influences from Naturalism to Impressionism, which he supported enthusiastically, leading on to movements like Expressionism and Futurism.

Based on Phaidon encyclopedia of Impressionism, Maurice Serullaz, Phaidon, 1978