Art and the German Bourgeoisie: Alfred Lichtwark and Modern Painting in Hamburg, 1886-1914 (review)

Carolyn Kay's book, like the recent 2003 publications by Beth Irwin Lewis (Art for All?: The Collision of Modern Art and the Public in Late-Nineteenth-Century Germany) and Jennifer Jenkins (Provincial Modernity: Local Culture and Liberal Politics in Fin-de-Siècle Hamburg), contributes to a well-established literature, dominated in English-language scholarship more by historians (Peter Paret, Robin Lenman, and others) than art historians, that examines the tensions surrounding modernist painting in Germany at the turn of the twentieth century. The prevalence of historians in this area has to do not only with the continuing francocentric view of nineteenth-century European art among art historians, but also with historians' continued interest in the relations or lack thereof between nineteenth-century German nationalism, culture, middle-class politics, and the eventual development of National Socialism.

Kay's book focuses on Alfred Lichtwark (1852-1914), a key cultural figure in Hamburg during his long tenure as director of the Kunsthalle from 1886 to 1914, when he built up an impressive collection for the museum, including works by Hamburg painters and, most controversially, French and German impressionist and post-impressionist art. As Kay explains, Lichtwark thought of himself not only as an educator for what he considered a boorish middle class in need of aesthetic education, but also as a 'nationalist devoted to modern German culture' that needed to 'secure a place alongside Britain and France.' Lichtwark believed that modernist painting could act as the basis for the development of a new German cultural tradition. 'Only the French,' he stated, 'have created great art in the nineteenth century,' and so Germans should 'link up with it for the future development of German art.'

Through three case studies, Kay presents Lichtwark's attempt to promote his vision of modern German culture in the 1890s. The first examines the reception of Max Liebermann's 1892 portrait of Hamburg Burgomaster Carl Petersen, and the second explores Lichtwark's support for avant-garde Hamburg artists (the so-called 'New Tendency' in art) in the annual exhibitions of Hamburg's Kunstverein (Artists' Association). These two chapters investigate controversies that pitted Lichtwark and defenders of modernist painting against its detractors. The third case study, in contrast, shows Lichtwark's success in promoting modernist art to elite members of the middle class through the Gesellschaft Hamburgischer Kunstfreunde (Hamburg's Patrons of Fine Art), which, as Kay explains, was a 'receptive forum for Lichtwark's ideas about the transformative influence of art' and 'an important ally [to Lichwark] among Hamburg's bourgeoisie.'

In the first two case studies, Kay relates how Lichtwark's opponents regarded his support of modernist painting as an endorsement of decadent French artistic principles in opposition to German values and classical aesthetic standards. As one critic put it, 'like an epidemic this sickness [modernist painting] spreads, also infecting circles that have up to now been healthy.' In the case of the 'New Tendency,' Lichtwark's promotion of avant-garde art was clearly hindered: his supporters on the Kunstverein committee were ousted in favour of traditionalists. Lichtwark faced a similar backlash with the Liebermann commission, which was part of a series of portraits of famous Hamburg citizens by modern German painters established by Lichtwark to raise the status of Hamburg and to educate its citizens in contemporary art. As Kay demonstrates, Liebermann's work received a hostile critical reception, because its impressionist and Frans Hals-like style did not meet public expectations. In a letter to Lichtwark, Petersen himself stated: 'this is not the portrait of a Burgomaster, but of a drunken and depraved coffinbearer.' Kay rightly concludes that this antagonistic critical reaction had to do with 'how critics of modernism associated impressionism with the working class and radical politics.' Her argument could have been strengthened had she discussed Hals's renewed reputation in the nineteenth century. Leftist critics like Théophile Thoré (also known...