A Dune in Noordwijk—Dune Promenade

Around 1900, Liebermann turned to new motifs. By this time, the fishermen’s villages along the coast of the Netherlands, which he had visited almost every summer during the 1880s, had become popular seaside resorts. The painter now discovered sports (Tennis Players, Riders on the Beach) and the leisure pastimes of the prosperous upper middle class. In A Dune in Noordwijk—Dune Promenade he depicted a stroll along the sandbanks at the seaside resort of Noordwijk. The flag at the left edge of the work marks the steps up to one of the hotels, which stis on higher ground. Sitting on the slope above the path through the sand is a man (or boy) from the neighboring village, a relic of times gone by. Before him, the sea, reflecting the hazy light of the sky, takes on a yellowish hue, and the dune grass bends in the sea breeze. The the boats and bathing installations on the beach are so distant from where the viewer is standing that they seem to melt into indistinct patches, and the strollers on the line of the surf have become mere spots of color. This small painting, like Nets and Sails Spread over a Meadow, is also a sketch for a larger work, Dune Promenade, painted the same year, now in the Kunsthalle in Bremen.