Nets and Sails Spread over a Meadow: Study for the Net Menders

During his first two decades as a painter, Liebermann focused almost exclusively on themes concerned with the life and labor of farmers and fishermen. After Flax Barn of 1887 (Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin), his next large composition was Net Menders (1889; Kunsthalle, Hamburg), a scene of fishermen’s wives repairing their husbands’ nets on a beach. The painter Jozef Israëls, who had often depicted…