Greatly endowed by nature, by reason of his racial origin, and because of his liberal education, Liebermann was bound to become a versatile artist. That doesn't mean he is a perfectionist in many things, that he etches as well as he paints, that he composes as well as he draws. As a matter of fact he is not as accomplished a master of the medium as is Anders Zorn; many a smaller man, artistically speaking, handles the needle with more deftness than Liebermann. But as a general impression counts as much as technique, your little etcher is soon forgotten when you are confronted with such plates as the self-portraits, the various beer-gardens, the houses on the dunes (with a hint of the Rembrandt magic), or the bathing boys. His skill in black and white is best seen when he holds a pencil, charcoal, or pen in his hand. The lightness, swiftness, elasticity of his line, the precise effect attained and the clarity of the design prove the master at his best and unhampered by the slower technical processes of etching or lithography. I studied Liebermann's work from Amsterdam to Vienna, and out of the variety of styles set forth I endeavoured to disentangle several leading characteristics. The son of a well-known Berlin family, his father a comfortably situated manufacturer, the young Max was brought up in an atmosphere of culture and family affection. His love for art was so pronounced that his father, like the father of Mendelssohn, let him follow his bent, and at fourteen he was placed under the tutelage of Steffeck, an old-timer, whose pictures nowadays seem a relic from some nightmare of art. Steffeck had studied under Schadow, another of the prehistoric Dinosaurs of Germany, and boasted of it. He once told Liebermann that Adolf Menzel only made caricatures, not portraits. You rub your eyes and wonder. Liebermann has said that this rigid training did him good. But he soon forgot it in actual practice. Some good angel must have protected him, for he came under the influence of Munkaczy and, luckily for him, escaped the evil paint of that overrated mediocrity. But perhaps the Hungarian helped him to build a bridge between the antique formula of Steffeck and the modern French--that is, the Impressionists. Max had to burn many bridges behind him before he formed a style of his own. Individuality is not always born, it is sometimes made, despite what the copy-books assure us to the contrary. The wit and irony of the man and painter come both from Berlin and from his Jewish ancestry. He looks like a benevolent Mephistopheles, and is kindness personified to young artists.