Bleaching on the Lawn
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| Bleaching on the Lawn | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Artist | Max Liebermann |
| Year | 1882–1883 |
| Medium | oil on canvas |
| Movement | Realism |
| Dimensions | 109 cm × 173 cm (43 in × 68 in) |
| Location | Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Cologne |
Bleaching on the Lawn is an oil-on-canvas painting executed in 1882–83 by the German painter Max Liebermann. It depicts a scene that takes place in a Dutch cottage garden in Zweeloo, in the province of Drenthe, in North Holland, where several washerwomen are laying out large white linen towels to dry and bleach. The painting is in the collection of the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, in Cologne.[1]
From the early 1880s until the beginning of the First World War, Liebermann traveled regularly to the Netherlands, for study and recreation, appreciating the country's beauty, their people, social institutions and also their "great picturesque past".[2] While studying in Paris, Liebermann was particularly influenced by the painter Jean-François Millet, who impressed him with his realistic works. Liebermann lived in the Barbizon artists' colony for a while in 1874, but didn't meet Millet because of his dislike of Germans. In December 1878, Liebermann moved to Munich, which was then considered the artistic capital of Germany, and painted some of his best-known works there.[3] In 1881, he met Dutch painter Jozef Israëls, in Amsterdam, who introduced him to other members of the 'Hague School'.[4]
In 1882, he stayed in the Netherlands for several weeks, where he created the current painting at the inn of Jan and Lammechien Mensel in the village of Zweeloo, in the province of Drenthe.[5] It is a typical image of working for him: a woman is crouched in front of the washtub in the foreground, while the other maids lay out the cloths, another carries a heavy wooden bucket to the laundry place and two others lay cloths in the Sun to bleach them. He painted the orchard from nature, adding the working women later in the studio.[6] He first drew a small oil sketch and tested the image section and the coloring of the painting, on another sketch he tried the positioning of the figures with a so-called imprint process, in which he painted the outline of the washerwoman in the foreground with charcoal and repeatedly printed it on the paper.
An original version of the painting was exhibited in the Salon de Paris, to negative criticism. The critics stated that the washerwoman dominated the foreground in this version. In the following year, he reworked the painting, introducing another piece of laundry, another lawn and an additional tree, and shortened the lower edge of the canvas by around 20 centimetres.[7] These changes meant that the focus was no longer on the maid in the foreground, but rather on the depth of the landscape, which is emphasized even more by the wider format.[8]