Horse-tamer on the Beach
  • Max Liebermann
  • Berlin 1847 - 1935
  • Horse-tamer on the Beach, 1908
  • Charcoal on beige laid paper,
    partly erased by the artist,
  • signed lower right: M Liebermann
  • 448 × 364 mm
Provenance:
Kunstkabinett R.N. Ketterer, Stuttgart
collection Erich Tgahrt (1882-1945), Essen
private colletion Rhineland

Margreet Nouwen views this drawing in direct connection with the lithograph “Naked Rider on the Beach — Horse-tamer” from 1908 (Fig. 1), which would appear in the following year on the parchment cover of the portfolio Max Liebermann — Seven Engravings1. Two further, somewhat less finished drawings from the same year also vary this motif, which Liebermann had taken from his Horsemen on the Sea2. Liebermann made his first painting on this subject as early as 1902, but his many returns to the theme of horse-taming over the following decades attest to his particular interest in this situation full of movement, both of humans, animals, and nature itself.

The depictions all show the moment when the overheated draught horses are led into the flat sea to cool off. The animals, made nervous by the waves, must often then be calmed by being mounted by the horsemen.

On this sheet, Liebermann has sought to heighten the contrast between the animated sea spray and the presence of the animal through subsequently rubbing out the area around the horse.

  1. Oscar Bie: Max Liebermann – Sieben Radierungen,
    B. Cassirer and J. Bard, Berlin 1909
  2. Margreet Nouwen provided an art-historical evaluation of this
    drawing in October 2011.