Max Liebermann had first traveled to Holland in 1871, when he was still a student in Weimar. For the next forty years, the Netherlands would become a source of artistic inspiration for him to which he returned almost annually. He was fascinated by the broad, flat landscape and the rich artistic tradition of Rembrandt and Frans Hals. He observed and visually depicted scenes of weavers, shoemakers, women making preserves, and seamstresses in small villages like Laren, Zweeloo, Katwijk, and Dongen.

From the 1890s on, his work entered a new phase, inspired by French Impressionism. From then on, the painter spent his summer months on the North Sea coast of Holland, initially at the popular seaside resorts of Scheveningen and Zandvoort. In 1905, Liebermann discovered the small, idyllic coastal town of Noordwijk between Amsterdam and The Hague. He traveled there almost every year until 1913, and as he himself said, he “knew every person, every house, almost every tree, and in fact had painted almost everything.” The only year he did not travel to Noordwijk was in 1910, when he and his family moved into the newly built villa on the Wannsee. 

In 1914, World War I put an abrupt end to his regular painting trips to the neighboring country of Holland. From then on, Liebermann no longer traveled during the summer and instead retreated to the Wannsee. His brilliantly colored late work comprises two hundred paintings, oil studies, and pastels, created in his luxuriant garden.

Today, the Liebermann villa is a museum, where visitors can see four works by the painter depicting views from Holland.