Slevogt, Max

Slevogt, Max (1868–1932). German painter, printmaker, and illustrator, with Corinth and Liebermann one of his country's leading exponents of Impressionism. He was born at Landshut, Bavaria, into a well-connected family (his father, who died when Slevogt was 2, was a friend of Prince Luitpold, the future regent of Bavaria). From 1885 to 1889 he studied at the Munich Academy, and then spent a few months at the Académie Julian, Paris, 1889–90. In 1901 he moved from Munich to Berlin, where he taught at the Academy from 1917. Slevogt's early work was sombre, but from about 1900 his style became lighter, looser, and more colourful. His subjects included landscapes, portraits, and scenes from contemporary life; he loved the theatre and his best-known works include a number of portrayals of the Portuguese baritone Francesco d'Andrade in his most celebrated role as Mozart's Don Giovanni (an example, 1902, is in the Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart). Slevogt's vigorous brushwork, bold effects of light, and energetic sense of movement give his work great dash, but he never adopted the fragmentation of colours typical of the Impressionists and always retained something of the Bavarian Baroque tradition. He also differed from the Impressionists in that he devoted a good deal of his time to large decorative schemes; these included a fresco of Golgotha in the Friedenskirche at Ludwigshafen (1932; destroyed in the Second World War) that was often considered his masterpiece. He was a prolific illustrator, both for journals such as Jugend and Simplicissimus and for books, and also made many independent prints (etchings and lithographs).