st among the "rather sophisticated Berlin public." But it had an impact that went beyond this. The distorting lens of this idea eventually produced an art-historical narrative in which Impressionism was the central fact. Thus, according to the legend that emerged, Liebermann, Corinth and Slevogt "made great headway in Germany in the wake of French Impressionism already introduced there." Corinth himself, in an ironic, but accurate, catalogue of his stylistic phases of the 1880s and 1890s, merely allotted four years to Impressionism; noting that, from 1892 to 1896 he painted in either the style of "Impressionism or in the style of B÷cklin." For Liebermann, though he did develop a distinctive Impressionist-oriented style after 1900, the label was somewhat confining. It tended to limit appreciation of his body of early work, which was heavily influenced by Manet and Frans Hals. It also led people to overlook the fact that, even in his impressionist period, Liebermann never shared the goals of the French Impressionists, merely some of their techniques. As for Slevogt, his work, which often resembled Corinth's, was remarkable for "rococo rhythm," superb draughtsmanship, and slashing brush strokes--traits that may receive inadequate attention if the work is viewed merely in the light of the goals of the French Impressionists.
It has recently been argued that the whole notion of "'German Impressionism,' is itself highly questionable." There was no community of German painters, with shared, recognizably Impressionist goals, and the so-called German impressionists "took the pure optical experience, in Monet's sense, not as the aim of their art but as a means of intensifying the expression of the content or literary component of their pictures." In addition, their clear debts to French painters from Courbet to Cezanne, along with those to Monet and Renoir, suggest that the three Germans could better be labeled with some term...